


Drawn by Moonlight -- A Dragon Age Fantasy

by FlytsOfAngels



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Deviations from gameplay and canon, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-05-31 15:31:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19428862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlytsOfAngels/pseuds/FlytsOfAngels
Summary: When Varassan chose to stroll in the moonlight with the beautiful city elf who has appealed to his clan for protection, he could never have imagined the changes that that one romantic evening would lead to in his life.  But when he is attacked by an animal and his lady love disappears, everything that he had imagined for his life crashes down around him.And the changes aren't just about his plans.  He has changed, becoming something that he had always believed was the stuff of the storyteller's tales.  But he has changed.  And he must run to stay alive.For years, he has run, until he ended up at the Divine's conclave and survived the explosion, receiving the mark in his hand for all his efforts.  And then there's the questioning, and the intriguing Seeker who has discovered his truth.  But all he can think of is when and how he can make her his.______________________If you like this story, check out my other Dragon Age fantasies.Comments always welcome.





	1. Magnitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two young, potential lovers walk in the moonlight.

_**Magnitude —** The brightness of a celestial body. A lower magnitude number indicates a brighter object. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

Varassan turned and looked at the elf at his side again, not precisely certain how he had been the one — of all his clan — who had been chosen by her. When she had first appeared, bedraggled and worn, their Keeper had encouraged them to welcome her, as they would any elf who had managed to escape from the near imprisonment of a city alienage, the gated elven quarter of the town. A secured district that kept the elves practically enslaved to the people who would deign to give them work, mere scraps that were barely enough to survive. 

He had never known an alienage, had never known anything other than the brilliant green of the forests and the comfort of the starlit skies over his head, and he had listened to her stories with a combination of disbelief and amazement. Who would treat another being in such a manner? Why did the humans think that they were the ones in control of everything in Thedas?

“Do you think …?” she started and then stopped. Curious, he halted and looked down at her, studying her ethereal beauty. He honestly could say that he had never seen a more beautiful elf in all his years in the clans. Not that they were that many — those years — but he had once been to _Arlathvhen,_ the gathering of the clans, and he had been old enough that he remembered the experience even today. But she … well, she was more beautiful than the rows of _aravels,_ the Dalish wagons, had been when he had seen them lined up and his heart had thrilled at the thought of being together with so many of his own people. Her hair was the color of honey dripping from the comb; her eyes the green of shadowed pools in the deep forest; her skin softly pale and rosy; and her full, perfect lips …

If he were a wise man, he wouldn’t think about her lips. Not now, when they had been allowed to walk together into the forest, finally granted permission by the Keeper and his own parents. It was meant to be a moment when they could get to know each other better, learn what ideals they shared, and perhaps determine whether they could continue the relationship into the future. For months, however, she had been the only thing that he could think of — at least when he wasn’t patrolling the edges of their camps or hunting with the other young Dalish in his group, and he was more than certain that he wanted to continue into the future with her. He wanted her as his wife, his life-mate, and he would do whatever was necessary to convince her that they were meant to be together for the rest of their lives.

“Do I think what, Fionne?” he said, barely restraining the urge that he had to reach out and take the long, honey-colored braid that hung beside her temple into his fingertips. When she had first told them her name, he had thought that it was very strange and not at all Dalish sounding. Eventually, he had gotten her to explain to him that she had been named by the woman who had taken her in as a servant, called by the name of some Ferelden queen whom he had not even once heard mentioned in the tales that the Keeper told them around the campfire each night. She had never known her parents, and she had no memory of what she had been originally called by them. It had been easy for her to allow the renaming, then, because what other choice did she have? And eventually, he had learned to accept the name along with everything else about her. After all, he wanted her to be his. Forever.

In the moonlight that was filtering between the branches of the trees, he saw her smile up at him, briefly meeting his questioning look before she dropped her eyelids and closed the intimacy of her gaze away from him.

“Do you think that we’d get into trouble if I allowed you to kiss me while we’re away from the clan tonight?”

He gasped and then nearly choked on his surprise. But she’d always had that way about her — a talent for knowing almost exactly what he had been thinking at any moment in time. Coughing against the sensation that threatened to strangle him completely, he closed his eyes and stumbled forward, finally coming to a stop with his shoulder pressed deeply into the reassuringly solid trunk of a tall tree. For another long moment, he struggled with himself, his eyes squeezed tightly together, his breath rasping in and out of his mouth.

Finally, he had recovered enough that he could look over to where Fionne was standing waiting for him. While he had battled against his own body, she had walked a little further down the path to an open space that was bathed in moonlight. In that moment, she seemed one of the goddesses of Dalish lore, her hair highlighted with silver and the curves of her silhouette just perfectly accented by the light that surrounded her. For some reason, he couldn’t take his eyes off the soft shadows that marked that place — just there — where the top curves of her breasts rose slightly above the neckline of her dress. For a moment, he imagined himself a jealous lover, willing to challenge the moon for caressing his beloved in such an intimate way, and the thought made him smile.

She frowned at him. “Does that mean that you believe we’d be safe if we decided to be more … intimate … tonight than your parents might wish? Or that you think it’s a silly idea?”

Surprised, Varassan forced himself to stop smiling and levered away from the support of the tree. In all honesty, he had never heard her voice so icily cold, so impatient and hurt, and he felt a flush of shame wash through him, knowing that he had been the one who had caused the change in her mood. Walking slowly toward her, he spread his hands, much in the same way he would when he was moving to fetch one of the _halla_ that pulled their _aravels_ so that it could be harnessed. “I meant nothing by it, _lethallan,_ you must believe me. It’s just that I’d been telling myself that it was beyond any hope that I might be able to kiss you tonight, and then … well … you spoke as you did.”

He continued toward her, almost unable to stop himself, attracted to her figure there in the light of the full moon as if she were a lodestone. When he was mere inches from touching her, he did finally halt his movement and this time, without even thinking about it, he reached out and took that one long braid into his hand.

“ _Ir abelas,_ ” Varassan whispered while his fingers stroked the moonlit gold of her hair. “Forgive me for causing you pain, Fionne. I’d never intentionally harm you. You must believe that.”

He heard her sigh, and he looked up from the hand that was holding her hair and met her gaze. “Yes, I believe that. You are the most kind, the most gentle …”

“You make me sound like a nursemaid,” he teased, slowly wrapping the braid around his fingers. “I’m also a very proficient hunter, skilled with the bow, spear, and sword. And I’ve been told that I’ll have responsibility for my own squad of warriors in the new year. Kind and gentle won’t be required for either of those positions in the clan.”

“But,” she replied, slipping closer to him and sliding her hands along the outside of his arms until they came to rest on his shoulders, “kind and gentle are definitely things that I require from any man who might hope to bed me.”

He might have gasped again, simply from his shock at her words, but in the next moment, she rose on the tips of her toes and pressed her lips against his. For a second, his eyes widened in surprise, but then the sensations of her embrace overwhelmed him, and he abandoned himself to them. Closing his eyes, he let himself burn with the feelings that her lips created, shifting closer to her, seeking relief in that particular place that ached and strained for her. When her lips slipped open, he followed her example, freeing his tongue to joust and play against hers. He had kissed girls before — sweet, stolen moments with other Dalish and one time with a human whose family came to trade with his clan. But those kisses were nothing like the flames that licked through his entire body when Fionne touched him.

Because it wasn’t just their lips that were connected to each other. Her hands roved across his back and up into his hair, tugging gently at his raven-dark locks while he tentatively caressed her shoulders. As much as he wanted to do more, he was afraid that she would disappear, evaporate into the moonlight and rise back up into the heights where the gods dwelled, far away from the everyday world where he lived. It was still beyond his comprehension that she should be here, that her lips should be so very sweet and warm, that she should want this intimacy with him.

So when she pulled away from him, he was certain that it was over. She would take his hand and then lead him back to the circle of the _aravels,_ telling the clan that they might continue in small steps toward a future together. And the magic that sparked through his body would have to be suppressed, left in the darkness between the trees, drawn out of him by the lodestone pull of the moonlight that sparkled around him.

“Do you know a place?” she whispered, her lips trailing the edge of his jaw.

“A place for what?” he asked, more than a little uncertain about her question. And when she laughed, he felt even more confused.

Her hand slid down from his shoulder and onto one of his buttocks, and he had to keep himself tightly in control so that he didn’t thrust his hips forward into her. “A place where we can …” She paused suggestively, slipping her hand forward and allowing it to graze along the front of his thigh. “We can be closer. And lying down.”

“I don’t know,” Varassan said uncertainly, looking up into the trees that surrounded them. “The patrols will have been asked not to follow us, but if they can’t locate us quickly, they’ll come searching.”

“Do you really think you’ll be that long?” she purred. In the next moment, her fingers closed around him, and he did gasp, drawing in his breath harshly. Leaning forward, he sought her lips, determined to crush their petal softness beneath his own, but she evaded him, threading her fingers up into his hair and to the white streak that had been there for as long as he could remember.

“Where did this come from again?” she asked, twisting his pale locks around one finger. “Were you injured? A blow to the head?”

“No,” he replied, lowering his lips to her shoulder and kissing along the sloping angle. “It was just that way. Since I was very young.”

“And your eyes?” Fionne’s questions seemed to make no sense to him. She had known him for months, and she had never asked about anything involving his physical appearance before this moment.

“Blue as the skies, as they’ve always been, too. You may ask my parents about that.”

She laughed again. “No, no, that’s not necessary. I was just curious. So do you have a place we can go to or not?”

He pulled back so that he could look into her face. “Are you certain? If we’re discovered, we’ll be forced to … well, it’s not like I don’t want you to be my life-mate, but I would prefer that you were free to choose it.”

“Then,” she replied, rising up on her toes again so that she could press her lips against his for just an instant, “you should be certain that we won’t be discovered. Remember: it won’t be for long. And it will prove to us how compatible we are.”

He looked around and up into the trees, just to be certain that they were out of the regular patrol areas of the clan’s guards. Taking her hand, he led her through the brush, along the bank of the river that supplied the water for the elves and their animals. During his hunts with the other Dalish, he had found this place — an abandoned den that had long ago been washed clean by a flood of waters. The floor was sandy, and there was just enough brush covering the opening that no one would know where they had gone. He lifted the limb from a tree that was draped across the bushes and gestured for her to enter.

She looked at him uncertainly for a moment before she smiled and walked forward. Just when she was about to pass him, she reached out to clasp his buttock again and then trailed her hand across the front of his leathers before she bent to enter the little cave. Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled swiftly after her, allowing the branch to fall back into place.

It was dark in the little cave, so dark that he had to reach out so that he could know where she was. Her flesh was soft and warm, and he quickly moved closer to her, sliding her into his arms and reaching forward to find any place on her face that he could kiss. Luckily, she seemed as eager as he was to find his mouth, and she pressed tightly against him, her hands sliding along his body while he writhed closer and closer, searching blindly for any position that would relieve the aching in his body. In the darkness, shadowed from the moonlight, it seemed so much easier for him to allow his hands to travel across her curves, enjoying the feel of her even through their clothing. Their mouths remained locked together, their tongues seeking and thrusting, some kind of imitation of what might come, if he could be so very lucky.

Eventually, however, the layers of clothing seemed to be too much, and Varassan began to tug at the bindings that held her jacket in place. With a laugh, she joined him, swiftly stripping off her own clothing and helping him with his, laying the cloth and leather across the floor of the den and then forcing him back onto their makeshift bedding. He ran his hands across her skin, enjoying the velvety softness of her while she slipped onto his torso, her legs gripping him as if he were a horse to be ridden, her body straining forward so that her breasts just brushed against his lips. Opening his mouth, he sucked one hard crest and moaned when she slipped one hand behind his neck to lift him closer.

“Ah, yes!” she gasped, her voice low as if she feared that they might still be discovered.

“Fionne,” he moaned. “ _Ma vhenan._ By the Dread Wolf, you make me burn!”

“Yes, yes,” she replied, slipping lower on his torso until she lifted her hips and slipped down onto his hard shaft. In the next moment, Fionne rocked forward, bold and sharp, driving herself against him, and he nearly broke. Stilling his mind as if he were aiming his bow, he struggled to hold himself in check, fighting against the throbbing that was sheathed deeply inside her heat, groaning desperately while she pressed and circled and drove herself over the pinnacle of her pleasure.

“Howl for me,” she groaned, driving into him. Leaning back, she wrapped her fingertips around one of his nipples and tweaked it violently. “Howl, Varassan. Scream!”

And he did, releasing himself into her, unaware of anything other than his need to complete this most basic act of nature and claim her as his life-mate. He groaned and shuddered, digging his fingertips into the flesh of her buttocks and holding her tightly against him. In the moment, it almost seemed to him that he might faint, but he just managed to hold onto his consciousness, focusing on the feel of her around his shaft and the tight muscles clenched under his fingertips.

“Yes,” she seemed to purr above him. “That will do nicely. Such a lovely howl.”

He started to chuckle, but the sensation under his palms suddenly changed, and he wasn’t at all certain what had happened. It almost seemed as if she had managed to insert a newly cut pelt between his hands and her bottom, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? His fingers were still digging into her flesh. There was no space for anything else.

“You’ll hear me call to you,” she said, leaning closer, and he felt her breath — hot and fetid — against his face. “And you _will_ come to me. You’ll have no choice. You _will_ be mine.”

He nodded, even though he knew she couldn’t see, hoping that at least she could feel the motion. Lifting his head, he tried to answer her, reassure her that he was as committed to her as she seemed to be to him, but for some reason, his answer was cut off by an unbearable spike of pain that lanced through his throat. He longed to scream, but something covered his mouth. Something rough, edged by soft fur, with sharp tips that dug into his face. Warm liquid started to roll down the side of his neck, and he moved violently, thrusting the form on top of him away, wondering how — why — an animal had managed to invade their den.

“When the moon is full again,” he heard her gasp, her voice rough, hitting his ear almost like a growl. “Come to me. Or die.”

And then he didn’t know anything else. He finally did faint.


	2. Palus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varassan awakes in the healer's tent and faces what his parents tell him happened in the moonlight with Fionne.

_**Palus —** A Latin term meaning “swamp” that is used to describe topographical features on the moon which resemble dark plains or swamps. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

When he finally regained consciousness, Varassan had to wonder why he was so weak. Almost as if he had caught one of the children’s illnesses that could spread like a wildfire among the youngest of the clan when they struck. His eyes burned, and his throat felt like it had been wrung and wrung again, draining all its moisture. Breathing in deeply, he tried to speak, but all he could do was croak.

“Water.”

He heard a gasp and then a gentle hand was touching his face. In the next moment, the lip of a water skin was pressed against his mouth, and he sucked greedily at it, as if he could rid himself of that arid thirst in only a few swallows.

“Slowly, _ma vhenan,_ ” he heard his mother whisper to him. “You have only returned to us. There’s time for more.”

Time? Why would he need time? Once he had shrugged off this childish illness, he would be able to return to his duties with the clan and continue his pursuit of …

“Fionne!” he gasped, certain that he had bolted upright so that he could thrown himself from his pallet with the next motion and go in search of her. But when he opened his eyes, all he could see was the draped cover of the healer’s tent and the concern in his mother’s gaze. And then, he realized that he wasn’t upright at all — in fact, he had barely moved — and his mother was holding him pressed into the pallet with only one hand.

“No, Varassan” she whispered urgently. “Don’t move. You’re not strong enough yet. You …” Her voice choked to a halt, and he saw her look away briefly. When her eyes finally met his again, he could just catch a hint of sorrow — and something else, maybe horror — in her gaze.

“Where? Fionne?”

Patting him gently on the shoulder, she tipped another container against his lips, and he smelled the heady mix of herbs that he knew the healer used to put her patients to sleep. But he was too weak to refuse, too weak to resist the torpor that immediately filled him. His eyes slid closed, and he allowed himself to be carried off into the darkness once again.

The next time that he awoke, it was because the healer had chosen to change the dressings that covered the side of his throat and part of his left shoulder. Even though her touch was gentle, the pain surged through him, forcing a deep, guttural groan from his body and causing him to flinch away from her.

“Be still, Varassan,” she commanded, her voice firm and yet encouraging. “Your wound is vicious, and I’ve been forced to stitch it in order to allow the flesh to mend. I believe that I’ve saved your bow arm, and we must all be grateful that you weren’t injured on your draw side.”

Varassan grunted, not at all certain that his voice would work any better than it had that other time that he had used it. But he needn’t have bothered, because as soon as the healer had taken in another breath, she began again. After a few moments, he forgot to pay attention, because in all honesty, he didn’t feel any need to hear how his wounds had oozed and how worried everyone had been that he wouldn’t recover. He had his own questions which he chewed on silently while the healer peeled her handiwork away, reapplied her own special mixture of oils and herbs, and finally wrapped his wound again in clean linens.

When she was finished, she sat back and reached for a cup that was on the ground beside his pallet. Lifting it to his lips, she tipped it so that he could drink, but he turned his face away.

“No more,” he croaked. “Can bear it.”

The healer looked at him uncertainly. “If you believe so,” she said slowly, “then I will allow it for a time. Your father had hoped to speak with you in any event, and I don’t think that I’ll be able to put him off any longer. Would you like to sit up more? Or to have a skin of water at hand?”

When he nodded, she moved closer and easily lifted him up against her shoulder, fiddling behind him with the bedding. But he wasn’t thinking about that. All he could focus on was the fact that this woman, their clan’s healer, had been able to shift him so easily from his place on the pallet. While he rested there against her shoulder, he raised one arm, noting how thin his wrist and fingers had become over the time of his illness. But even that small motion seemed to drain his energies, and he dropped his arm back at his side and closed his eyes.

“Fionne?” he whispered close to the healer’s ear.

She slowly lowered him back onto the cushions and plumped them around his head to make certain that he was comfortable. “Never fear,” she said, and he was certain that he heard a tightness in her voice. “Your father will explain everything that has happened to you. But I demand that you remain still and quiet. Do not try to rise from your bedding, Varassan, or I will dose you with my sleeping draught again.”

He nodded and sat silently while she lifted the flap of her tent and walked out into the camp. Watching her go, he was dazzled for a moment by the brightness on the other side, and he had to close his eyes against the piercing of the yellow sun. Daylight. It was day. But he suspected that it wasn’t the day after his stroll in the moonlight with Fionne. Or even the day after that. At the moment, however, it was impossible for him to determine exactly how much time that he had lost. How long had he lingered in the oblivion of his unconscious mind and slowly mending body? How much of a strain had his absence put on the groups of hunters and the patrols? Who had been called upon to take his place?

But most importantly — and his mind always circled around to this question, again and again — where was Fionne? What had happened to her?

When the tent flap lifted again, he was barely able to make out the silhouette that crossed through the opening and then dropped the fabric again, shutting out the brilliant light. For a long moment, whoever had entered waited, allowing time for the adjustment to the dimness in the healer’s tent to pass.

“Varassan?” he heard his father ask and then the older man was beside him, lifting him just as easily as the healer had, up against the solid strength of his chest. His father clutched him tightly there, almost as if he believed that his son might disappear in the next moment. “ _Vhenan,_ ” his father gasped, and Varassan had to grit his teeth together to endure the pain that raced through him, starting under the bandage and filling him to the tips of his toes. “We were nearly convinced … we had thought that you might never recover. It has been a miracle that you have kept the Dread Wolf at bay, which certainly proves what a fine hunter you are, my son.”

While his father lowered him back onto the cushions, Varassan shook his head, “I don’t believe that the Dread Wolf has hunted me this time, Father. I haven’t heard his call. It has been darkness.”

“Yes, but you have found your way home,” the older man tried to reassure him. “And I’m grateful for that.”

Varassan nodded and quietly watched while his father struggled with himself in the dim light that seeped into the healer’s tent through the seams and at the spaces between the fabrics and the ground. He could sense the older man’s uncertainty which hung around him like the scent of his sweat. Twitching his nose, Varassan tried to erase the smell from his awareness, but it was nearly impossible. Which seemed very strange to him, because all the members of his clan bathed regularly, usually when they had returned from a hunt or patrol. It was a part of who they were, and he had to wonder what had driven his father to the point that he would ignore such a basic habit.

“I don’t believe that anyone has told you about what happened,” the older man finally began, speaking slowly while his hands clenched and unclenched on his knee. “And while we had all agreed that I should be the one to tell you, I’m afraid that I’ll fail you, _vhenan._ Would you prefer to ask me your questions instead? Would that satisfy you more easily?”

He shook his head. “As you will, Father. I’ll trust in your wisdom.”

The older man nodded. “When we gave you permission to walk the forest, we had been certain that you were safe. The forest seemed clear of all predators, especially as close to our _aravels_ and the fire as we knew that you would stay. But when you failed to return to the camp, we sent out scouts immediately. Eventually, we found you, your body torn, your clothing strewn about you and as rent as your shoulder had been.”

“In the cave? Beside the river?” He couldn’t resist the urge to clarify just these few details before he allowed his father to continue.

But the older man shook his head. “No. You were in the forest, near the trail that you had followed for your walk. There was blood around you, but …”

“Fionne?” He choked on the question.

His father shrugged. “We haven’t found her body. There was a trail of blood, and it appeared that something had been dragged away from where you were attacked. We found her clothing, which was just as destroyed as yours had been, but there’s no sign of her, _vhenan._ I can’t tell you where she is or if she survived the attack.”

Varassan swallowed hard, fighting against the sorrow that gripped his heart and closed off his throat. After a moment, he gasped in a deep breath, pushing away the urge to let the tears that were forming in his eyes flow unchecked across his cheeks. Staring desperately at his father’s face, he searched for something that might soothe his pain, take away the awareness of everything that he had lost and the future that had slipped between his fingers like so many lightning-quick trout.

“No sign?” he managed to croak into the silence between them.

His father shook his head again. “I know this will be hard for you to hear, Varassan, but it’s true. We found some of the clothing, but there’s no trace of her body. Not a scrap of skin or a bone left behind. Were you attacked by a bear? Or a wolf? We’ve all been wondering what would have dared to come so close to a Dalish encampment, but not a one of our hunters have said that they saw or heard anything larger than our _halla_ in the area. If we had suspected … if we had only known, we never would have allowed the two of you to walk unescorted.”

“No, of course not,” Varassan croaked. “Not even a track, not a clue for the hunters to follow?”

“There were markings that some of the men are convinced are tracks, but the hunters aren’t able to identify them. They’ve all begun to believe that they are simply from a combination of animals that passed the same direction within a short time.” His father sighed and leaned slightly closer. “You don’t remember anything, _vhenan_? Nothing that happened to you that evening?”

Settling more deeply into the cushions behind his head, he considered what he remembered about his stroll in the moonlight. There was the moment when she had kissed them, and her suggestion that they should find some place where they could be alone. And, perhaps — his thought were confused after that — because he wasn’t at all certain that he remembered anything clearly. He thought that he had led Fionne into that cave near the stream, but his father had told him that their bodies had been found in a completely different place. Far away from where he had held her in his arms, and she had mounted him, bringing him such pleasure …

“I don’t know, Father,” he admitted, staring up at the sloping roof of the healer’s tent. “My memory is … jumbled at best. And if she’s gone …” He stopped, feeling his heart break once again, knowing that every plan he had begun must now be abandoned.

“But you are alive, my son,” his father emphasized. “In time, you’ll understand how important that is.”

Sighing, Varassan nodded slightly and allowed his eyes to slide closed. It was all too confusing, too painful for him to continue to concentrate on, and he would be just as happy if his father left him alone so that he could try to determine what had been true between him and Fionne. Had he imagined it all — the passion, the caresses, the completion? He couldn’t even know how his mind could have invented that all in the secret of his thoughts, especially since he had so few experiences to form the basis of his imaginings. What had happened between him and Fionne had been beyond what he had hoped for that night, perhaps even beyond what he expected for their future together. But had he simply made it all up in the quiet of his own mind? Had they truly stopped along the trail and … then what? Kissed? Continued their walk, perhaps holding hands and speaking about what their future could be? His head started to swim, and he moaned softly at the pain that was lingering in his shoulder.

“I’ll let you get more rest,” his father said, gripping the hand that was closest to him for a moment. “The healer suggests that you might be able to return to our _aravel_ in a day or two. Your mother would be most pleased with that, I’m certain. And we … we’re prepared to care for you, as long as it takes for you to recover. Rest easy, son.”

Varassan nodded and clenched his fingers in the blanket that was laid across his torso and covered his legs. Through the comfort of his closed eyelids, he saw the moment when his father lifted the tent flap and heard him call for the healer. Within moments, she was at his side, raising his head in one hand while he other pressed the cup of her sleeping concoction agains his lips. The smell was so strong that he nearly gagged, but he managed to suppress the urge and drink down the potion, giving himself over completely to the erasure that followed, the sinking into the darkness and the release from the pain, the chance to leave everything behind him.

Eventually, however, the healer agreed that he should be allowed to leave the protection of her constant care and hovering, and he thought that he would welcome it. Until his mother became his constant caretaker and hovered around him, always there to ask what he might need or whether he was in pain. He knew that she would never understand that the ache that he suffered couldn’t be soothed by a potion or his favorite meal, but he accepted her ministrations with as much good humor and grace as he possibly could. And eventually, she seemed to calm down and wait for those moments when he actually needed her.

And then the dreams started.

He would awake, shaking and sweating, feeling as if he had run for miles among the trees and over the hillsides around their camp. In the darkness of those evenings, he regretted that he was back with his family, even though the little ones would sleep through almost anything. But his groans of pain and panting breaths always woke his mother … and sometimes his father. They would come to him and hover, and in those first moments, he had reached out blindly, gripping their hands in his own and shuddering while they spoke soothingly to him and pressed the sleeping potions to his lips again. And he gave in, let them cloud his mind and send him into the darkness without his consciousness to control his dreaming.

But he began to heal, and one day, just before the moon turned full again, he was able to walk to the circle around the fire. The other members of the clan welcomed him, but he could feel their reluctance, that they were holding something back from him. But they all told him how brave he was being, how deeply they sympathized with his loss and his sorrow. Especially the young girls who were around his same age — and thinking about being joined for life with another member of the Dalish. His fellow hunters nodded their approval at his stoic acceptance of his pain, but what did they know? Did he have another choice? Could he actually slip into the new set of leathers that his mother had stitched together for him, pick up his bow and sword, and set off along a nearly month-old trail to find Fionne? Was their any hope of success in that idea? What could he actually achieve?

So he accepted their reassurances and expressions of sympathy, which grew fewer and fewer as the evenings passed. Until one night, they actually left him alone in the light of the moon, with only his thoughts for company, searching for the way that he might be able to reshape his life without Fionne as his partner. His thoughts chased each other in circles, like the youngest Dalish at their games, and he knew that there was no way for him to move forward unless he was willing to let her go. She was gone, and if he could accept that as a solid fact, he could take that first step into his new life.

Rising from his place beside the fire, he sighed in pleasure at the fact that his shoulder barely twinged with pain, and he straightened to his full height and looked up at the patterns of stars spread out across the sky. Closing his eyes, he listened to the sounds of the night insects trilling to each other, the soft rustle of the tree branches against each other. It was all so familiar, so soothing, and it filled him with a sense of — well, perhaps not hope, but at least peace. Certainty. Thedas would always be like this, this land of nature and renewal, and when he accepted his place in it, that peace and certainty could be his.

Opening his eyes, he looked around at the circle of _aravels_ and breathed in deeply, starting toward his parents’ own wagon. The singing of the insects followed him, and he listened to their song until the moment that he found his own bedding.

And somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.


	3. Declination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some changes are for the best. Others are ... unexpected. And unwelcome.

_**Declination —** Declination is the position of a celestial body, such as the Moon, in the equatorial coordinate system. Declination is measured by degrees in relation to the celestial equator. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

_“Run!”_ his mind screamed at him, and he jolted upright on his pallet, his eyes immediately taking in the details of the campsite around them. _“Flee! Escape! You’re not like them!”_

Looking around wildly, Varassan fought with the panic that continued to send shivers down his back, trying to determine whether he had awoken anyone else in the little clusters of Dalish near the _aravels_. But everything seemed wrong, as if the moon had washed away some of the color from the world around him, and he suddenly wanted to rub his fingers across his eyes, to see whether he couldn’t clear the film that clouded his sight. But when his hand came within the range of his vision, he stopped, strangling the scream of horror that filled his throat.

Because it wasn’t his hand.

It was something else completely.

The fingers were still there, but they had been covered with a layer of dark fur, and his nails had extended and curved into claws. Unable to control himself, he scrabbled backward across the pad that he had been using as a pillow. Or at least he tried to, but his legs wouldn’t work the way that they always had. Gripping his blanket in his mutated hand, he ripped it away from his body and stared in horror at the fur that covered his torso and legs — legs that had elongated in strange places and ended in paws with the same kind of hooked claws that were on his hands. He looked around wildly once again, trying to be certain that no one was awake.

And then he ran.

It was the only thing that made sense to his scattered mind — that he should escape the people whom he had known for his entire life because, once they awoke and saw what he had become, they would kill him. So he slunk along the ground, staying close to the shadows that actually seemed remarkably clear. Much more clear to his sight than when he had patrolled the edges of the camp at night with his fellow hunters, even more clear than other nights — like this one — that had been lit by the crystal, silvery glow from the full moon. When he inhaled, he could smell the sharp scents of the forest and the musky flesh of the Dalish near the _aravels._ The smells — and his knowledge of the patrol paths that the hunters would follow —helped him negotiate through the woods, as did the keener perception that his improved hearing provided. With the new levels of his senses, he managed to bypass the patrols, and when he finally found one of the more familiar game tracks, he raced along it, away from the Dalish of his clan. And his heart beat frantically while his mind continued to scream for him to flee.

_Run. Escape. Death awaits you if you are still. Flee. Flee! Flee!_

He pelted along, barely registering the landmarks that he had memorized during his clan’s stay in the area, until finally all of the familiar sights had disappeared. Luckily, he had come to a long stretch of open space that ran along the top of the bank of a stream that flowed through the forest. But he just couldn’t be certain that he would be safe. Looking over his shoulder, he was about to slow his frantic gallop to a more even, efficient lope when — parallel to his own path — he heard a wolf howl.

The sounded startled him so very badly, causing his heart to pound uncontrollably in a panicky rush. Instead of slowing, he urged himself forward, but his fear also caused him to lose his focus. In the next moment, he was unbalanced, and he tumbled down the side of the embankment and landed in the chilly waters. The splash sounded so loud in his ears that he immediately threw himself into the shadows of the overhanging branches of a tall tree. Looking up the hill, he shivered, a deep uncertainty filling him while his strange, new eyesight scanned the crest of the riverbank.

And froze. Captured by the glowing red of a predator’s eyes.

The beast gazed back down at him, and he could feel his fear spike through his body, urging him once again to run. _Flee!_ But the part of his mind that retained his humanity argued that it was hopeless: the creature above him was in a better position to launch an attack. As a result, he hunched down into his new, unfamiliar body and waited. To his surprise, a low growl vibrated through his throat.

In response, the beast on the embankment above him looked away and then moved forward into a pool of gleaming moonlight. Varassan gasped.

The creature wasn’t a wolf — not precisely — even though the head was shaped much the same way that a wolf’s was, and the long, furred arms and legs ended in paws and curved claws. Pacing along the crest of the stream’s bank, it moved like a wolf, too, its eyes never leaving his as it stalked to a place just above him. Varassan waited, tensed to spring, certain that the attack was about to come.

But it didn’t. Instead, the beast rose up on its hind legs, straightening quite easily to the height of a human or a Dalish. He studied the body — that strange combination of humanoid and wolf — the snout and long, sharply pointed ears and the waves of light fur that covered the body and limbs. The creature stood still for a moment, looking around as if to be certain of something. Perhaps that they wouldn’t be seen; or that they were alone and the beast wouldn’t be forced to share the kill with any other predators. The other thought that suddenly occurred to him was that there might be a pack waiting to devour his corpse. Pricking his new ears, he swiveled them, keen to hear any movement in the brush along the stream before attack came. He wouldn’t let his gaze drop from the other creature’s, but he found that his other senses helped him compensate. Breathing in sharp, little inhales, he searched for a smell that was unfamiliar — threatening — but the forest around him was woodsy and natural. In the next moment, the wind shifted, and he thought that he caught a whiff of the beast’s musk.

And his heart leaped.

There was something that he recognized in that scent, something that made his eyes fill with tears — tears that he didn’t know that he could cry until they pooled. It was a smell that made his loins stir in spite of the grief that filled every possible inch of his body.

It was the scent of _her._

Fionne, the woman who had been lost to him. A burning anger filled him, and he could feel the newly formed fur on the back of his neck and down the center of his spine rise. He began to growl again, long and low, and the lips that covered his sharp fangs pulled back slowly.

The creature above him studied him for a moment longer, and he thought that he saw a little smirk form on that alien face. And then, to his surprise, the beast shimmered.

And then it changed.

It should have been a painful process, he was certain, because the unnatural body became something different. The fur disappeared; the snout shortened; and the limbs seemed to reorganize themselves into the comforting proportions of a humanoid.

Into the beloved, familiar proportions of Fionne.

Once again, he felt his heart leap while he studied her where she was standing above him. She seemed proud of her nakedness, clothed as she was in only the fall of her honey-colored hair, which draped indolently across her breasts and swung freely around her hips. Inhaling deeply, he confirmed that it was her, and his body stirred at the memory of the last time that he had smelled the heady, heated musk of her while she had writhed above him in the fires of their passion.

And then she had leaned closer to him and …

“What have you done to me?” he snapped without thinking about it, and his voice emerged from his throat as some combination of a growl and a howl. He lunged up the bank, but he miss the footing that he would have needed to propel himself closer to Fionne. Stumbling, he tumbled back into the waters behind him, splashing into the shallows and gasping in pain when he landed against the sharp edge of a hidden rock.

When he finally looked up at Fionne, she was smiling at him, as if she was entertained by his discomfort with his new form and his inept attempts to control limbs that were disproportionate to those he was accustomed to using. In an expression of the rage that burned through him, he lashed out at the waters around him, sending up a great spray and causing a white foam on the surface that was quickly sucked away by the unrelenting flow of the stream.

Fionne simply laughed at him and started down the embankment toward him. “I have to compliment you, my Dalish lover. You’ve understood the source of your transformation much more quickly than other of my lovers have. And it appears that your new body hasn’t broken you physically or mentally.”

“Has that happened?” he gasped, his imagination suddenly filled with images of unnaturally contorted bodies, spines twisted and limbs stretched at abnormal angles. Unable to control himself, he whimpered softly, a whine that suddenly seemed completely normal.

Frowning, Fionne stopped at the edge of the stream. “That’s not important now. All I want you to know is that you’ve made your transformation with a certain ease that others haven’t achieved. Congratulate yourself. You’ve survived.”

“But as what, Fionne?” Varassan growled again. “By the Dread Wolf, what have you done to me?”

She laughed again, moving to a place where she could perch on a smooth rock with her hair curtaining her soft curves. “Believe me, Varassan,” she replied with a harsh edge in her voice, “your Dalish gods have nothing to do with what has happened to you. I have _remade_ you. You are now immortal, blessed with recuperative powers that you could only begin to imagine. If you accept this gift, pursue it to the very limits of its potentials, you might even begin to believe that I have made you into a god.”

He whined softly once again. “Without my consent? Without knowing whether you would achieve success?”

She shrugged, obviously not at all concerned over the risk that she had taken with his life. “You were the one who was determined that we should spend our lives together. At least that was what you said to me when you believed that I was only another Dalish. Had you been lying then? Was it only a few pretty phrases so that I would allow you to fuck me?”

Varassan flinched at her words. Yes, at some point all those weeks ago, he had loved her enough to want to commit his life to her health and happiness. But this? Eternity? Who even knew what that would mean?

Surely she did. Her words had implied that she had taken these steps in the past — perhaps more than once — that she had created these transformations in others before his own. And yet, she had appeared among the Dalish of his clan alone, looking as if she had walked miles through the forest and found them by the merest chance. What had happened to her last companion? What did separating yourself from this strange woman mean to the person who tried to accomplish the act?

“Where are the others?” he inquired, for some reason wanting to expose the aspect of her relationships that would cause him the most pain first. Or to cause her pain. He couldn’t be certain.

She shook her head. “There aren’t any others. I’ve been alone for years until now,” she said sadly, and he felt his heart lurch at her pain. “I’ve only ever had one mate at a time, Varassan, and I’ve chosen you for the next piece of my existence.”

“Where have the others gone? Why were you alone when we found you in the forest?”

She shrugged carelessly. “Does that matter? Wouldn’t you prefer to start our life together as just the two of us? It’s what would have happened if we had remained among the Dalish, wouldn’t it?”

Varassan growled for a moment. “Except that we would have been with the clan. We would have had the support of my family and the keeper and the elders who could have guided and advised us. You’ve cut us loose, and now we only have ourselves to depend on.”

“Which is why I chose you, my love,” she replied, slipping from the rock and into the water of the stream. She moved closer to him, her hips sliding from side to side in a way that caused the strange — but surprisingly similar — anatomy on his lower torso to burn with a longing that he knew she would be able to use against him time and time again in the future. He was about to shift away from her when she shimmered again, returning to her wolfish form and dropping her face into the space between his legs. Starting in surprise, he shifted so that he could back away, but he felt her tongue run across the fur that now covered his skin. The sensation inflamed him even more, and he lunged forward to wrap his long, clawed fingers around her ears.

“Like that do you?” she asked, her voice gravelly and harsh compared to the soft seduction of her tone when she was fully elven. “I’ve chosen you as my mate, Varassan. I’ll protect you and guide you, because I’ve made you mine.” She slipped forward across his body, and one of her paws reached down to wrap around the hardness that had risen from the fur between his legs. When she was close enough, her tongue flicked out across his own muzzle, pushing into him while her hand stroked him again and again. He gasped and squirmed, answering the demands of her tongue in return and grunting eagerly to try, in any way, to demonstrate to her how pleased he was with her attentions.

“Mount me, Varassan,” she finally whispered, turning away from him and planting herself firmly on her four, wolfish limbs. By that point, he was so afire, burning so hotly, that all he could think of was the release that her body could give him. Angling up onto his hind legs, he slipped on top of her, impaling her swiftly and pumping furiously into her. He was so possessed by his passion for her that he even leaned forward and sank his teeth into the thick ruff of fur that surrounded her neck and protected her shoulders. She whimpered in a very dog-like fashion and pushed her hips into him, and he met her thrust for thrust until he finally peaked, pouring his seed into her and groaning deeply until he collapsed off her and back into the water of the stream.

While he heaved his breath deeply in and out of his lungs, he allowed Fionne to snuggle more closely against him, sliding his arm around where her waist would be in her elven form and tracing his other hand or paw up the side of her neck to gently caress his fingers across her face and snout.

“It will always be like this,” she whispered. “While you are mine, you may take me any way that you want, in any form that you want. You will discover the glories of years of living, of shaping your world in the ways that you choose, with me at your side. I will fulfill every desire that you will ever have, even before you dream that they are possible. Because you are mine.”

And in that moment, it almost seemed that it would be enough for him. When their mated life began, it was a thrilling chase. She taught him to change his forms at will, to use his ability to shift to track and kill his prey, to enjoy the warm feel of fresh blood in his wolfish mouth and the sweet tang of still-warm game on his tongue.

But over time, he learned that he had been wrong. Because, while she might be able to satisfy him in every possible way, it seemed that he would never be able to return the favor for her.

It started some years after she had transformed him when they were running together through the mountains near Orlais. While he had never considered her a very curious individual, she had suddenly become fascinated by the pack structure of the wolves that they encountered. Not that they could get anywhere near the little, tight-knit groups of animals, but Fionne discovered ways to watch their behaviors by climbing into the trees near their dens and following their hunting parties as closely as they possibly could.

Her first idea was that they should start a pack — that if he could only impregnate her, she would be able to bear their offspring, whom they could raise as they would and train to be productive partners in their hunts and their lives. But through years of trying, in all of the forms that they could maintain through the act, she never conceived. Not one moment of even the thought that she might be pregnant.

Eventually, he knew that it had been too much, and he felt her withdraw from him, barely responding when he suggested that they needed to hunt or he brought her some of the beautiful things that he found in the forest. In those dark days, he was certain that she would send him away or leave him during the night, slinking off to find another whom she could turn and mate with until they had fulfilled her the hope of a pack.

And in the end, when she came to him with her new idea for their pack, he took it as a sign that she truly did love him, because she was still willing to include him in her plans. On that night, she approached him in her elven form, moving beside him where he was sitting near their little fire and sliding one of her hands into his lap. Somewhere, in their years of travel, they had managed to steal a small collection of clothing that they kept in a heavy leather backpack, and he had developed the habit of slipping into one of his pairs of trousers when he was in his original form. Her fingers fumbled with the closure that held the fabric together while her tongue circled his ear and her lips traveled across his cheek. When her mouth met his, he desperately wrapped his arms around her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth and levering her down onto his blanket that was lying behind him. It had been so long since she had allowed him to touch her, and he had lived in such dread of her displeasure that he held himself back, stroking her and suckling her and doing everything that he could to ensure that she would be satisfied with him. When he finally slipped inside of her, he was nearly bursting with his need for release, but he kept his stranglehold on his own body — perhaps having learned more than one trick that he could use to manipulate his physical form — until he heard her cry out his name. It was only then that he allowed himself to fill her with his seed, groaning and gasping in a pleasure that had long been denied to him. When he slipped onto his blanket beside her, he was certain that she would move away from him, that it had simply been a moment when she had needed relief from her own carnal urgings, but she had snuggled tightly against him and kissed him once again.

“Varassan, I have an idea,” she had murmured, and a cold shiver had raced down his spine.

“Hmmm?” he questioned without using words. Hoping that he would be able to keep her happy with him, he trailed his hands across her body, cupping her breasts and playing with the tender flesh of her nipples.

“I still believe that we’ll be safer in a pack,” she said, pressing herself into his hand, silently urging him to be rougher. “What if … please believe me that I only want to do this for our safety … but what if I were to turn someone else?”

His hand stilled, and he found that he was holding his breath.

She hurried to fill the silence that had settled between them. “It wouldn’t be for me, my love,” she suggested. “At least not for me alone. I wouldn’t want to turn a man. I was thinking that I would start with a woman, and you could also mate with her.”

“Why?” he managed to choke out. In all honesty, he was shocked by the suggestion, because he had once believed that they could exclusively be with each other throughout their lifetimes. And now she was suggesting that she would find it acceptable to watch him with another woman — or another female of their secondary species. But if it would keep her with him … could he mate with another, simply to satisfy her desires?

“Well, my love, I had thought that, in the end, it might not be your fault that we haven’t been able to add to our pack. Perhaps, with another woman, we might be able to create our own babies, which I could raise. Because, as the leader of the pack, I would have to be responsible for them.”

Her suggestion wasn’t anything at all like the behavior that they had observed in the wolves in the wild, but as long as Fionne was willing to assert her dominance over any other females whom she brought into their relationship, he believed that her idea might work. Especially because, over the years of their travels, he had learned precisely how ruthless she could be.

And at first, it did seem to be exactly as she had said it would be. She brought a human to him first. But because she had needed to seduce the woman — convince her that they were in love with each other — so that their new mate would accept her transformation, his coupling with the new, human female had seemed so much more like an effort to make Fionne happy, and he never found any real joy in the matings that he shared with their new pack member. Remarkably, however, the woman did conceive, but the first baby that she bore was strangely twisted and died shortly after he was born. Which only made Fionne more determined to find someone who would be able to deliver whole, healthy members to their pack.

She tried both city and free elves, dwarves, other humans — and some actually did deliver healthy members to their group, but usually at the expense of the mother’s life. At some point, Fionne decided that he had actually been the problem all along. That was when she started turning to males, who mated with her in what seemed to him like a never-ending parade of groaning completion and the wafting stench of semen.

And she was worshipped, because she would only turn someone who had sworn to her that they loved her without question and wanted to spend a lifetime with her.

But he had been with her for too many years, through too many plots and plans that had all been designed to make her happy. And in the end, it was too much. He packed his heavy leather backpack in the depths of a moonless night and slung it over his shoulder. Transforming into his wolfish form, he started away from the huddled forms that were arranged around the ashes of their cooking fire and, without looking back, he disappeared into the forest.


	4. Transit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of changes for Varassan involves him in some of the most momentous events in Thedas.

_**Transit —** The movement of a celestial body across another, from the viewpoint of an observer. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

Varassan looked around the circle of what he had learned were called “werewolves” and wished that he could slip into the forest once again. Someone, a man who called himself a Grey Warden, had come among the people who had accepted him as one of them, taking him into a clan once again, making everything that he had begun to rely on become tenuous and uncertain.

One of the females — they referred to her as ‘Sablemane’ — slipped up to his side.

“Do you think he will do it?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “Do you think that this Grey Warden will break the curse?”

He shrugged, realizing how awkward the motion felt with his heavily furred shoulders. Since he had been accepted into this group of wolfish creatures that he had found the Brecilian Forest in the south of Ferelden, he had maintained his werewolf form. It wasn’t truly by choice: it was because of the characteristics of beings who had taken him into their circle.

Because the werewolves of the Brecilian forest weren’t anything like him. They were actually suffering from a curse that had been laid on them by the keeper of a Dalish clan, and they had struggled for years against those who had spitefully transformed them into the monsters that they had become.

And here was the man who was saying that he would have the answer — that he would discover the truth and then, if everything turned out the way that this stranger expected, the werewolves would be freed from their curse. But he wasn’t at all certain. He had heard these promises before, the promises that things would be better if he would simply agree to the plan in front of him. It was what had made him a lonely man — and a lone wolf or werewolf — who had shunned company for years. Decades even. Who could tell any more? After all, she had made him immortal, hadn’t she?

He had searched for her afterward, when the pain of what he always labelled her ‘betrayal’ had finally worn thin. Or thinner. And eventually, he had found one of the others whom she had turned and had somehow managed to convince her that he wasn’t a threat. She, too, had escaped from the little cult that Fionne had created around her, a cult based on their worship of and love for the one who had made them immortal and creatures of ultimate, uncontrollable power. But that woman had only managed to free herself from her creator’s clutches because the creator had died.

Fionne was dead. Finally. After all the years that he wasted with her, after all the sacrifices that he had made, simply with the hope that somehow, in some small way, he might actually be able to make her happy. In that moment, his relief had struggled with a deep sense of sorrow, a true, gut-wrenching grief. Once, he had loved her — truly and deeply — and every promise that he had made to her in that past had been an honest expression of his heart. But eternity is much harder to maintain, even when it’s based on love, and what he had once believed was a burning flame had faded into ashes.

And he had run again. Away. Alone.

Until he had encountered these werewolves and had been included in their family.

Sablemane reached out and ran a finger down his arm. “Had you thought what you would do afterward? If we’re freed? Would you stay with us, Silverfang?”

That was what they had named him, because the werewolves of the Brecilian Forest didn’t use the names that they had been given by their families or their clans. And because it had been so many years, it was possible that they had forgotten what those words had even been or what they had meant. When he had first been brought before them, one of their members had commented on the white streak that always appeared in his hair — whether he was an elf or a werewolf — and had remarked how it looked like a tooth was growing out of the top of his head. And thus, “Silverfang” had been born.

“I’m not certain, Sablemane,” he said slowly. “I … if it meant that I might be separated from the rest of you …” He let his statement trail off, allowing her to draw whatever conclusions she might from the silence between them. If he could be honest with her, he would admit that he wasn’t anything like these other werewolves, that his transformation had been created in a completely different way. Even if the curse was lifted from the werewolves of the Brecilian Forest, it wouldn’t end his ability to change or the immortality that had been bestowed on him, his own little curse from Fionne.

In the end, he had been wise to have his suspicions. The stranger and his band of friends had battled with some of the more militant werewolves and learned the truth about the curse that kept them in their transformed bodies. And then the Grey Warden had decided that it would be more useful to have the power of the werewolves under his control, added to his collection of allies that were going to battle against the darkspawn that were spilling across Thedas, answering the call of the Archdemon. And what choice did the werewolves have? At least the Grey Warden had helped them destroy the Dalish who had been holding the werewolves in thrall to their curse. But it hadn’t ended their entrapment in their mutated bodies, and the only choice that the leader of the werewolves had seen for his people was for them to swear their allegiance to the Grey Warden for his war.

When they were finally called upon to fight, he marched with the other werewolves, his body straining with the need to battle, to prove his worth to the men and dwarves and golems that had been gathered. He could feel the promise of blood-letting like an itch under his skin, so when Sablemane came to his pallet in the deep of the night, he had welcomed her. Their coupling had been hard and fast, and still she had lingered with him afterward, her muzzle nuzzling against his neck while he held her on his shoulder.

“You’ll be there? On the day after?” Her voice was tentative and low, and he knew that she wasn’t at all certain that he would be there, at the place that she was hesitant to name. The place where she would want to meet him after they had faced down the darkspawn and the Archdemon.

“You may depend upon it, Sablemane,” he replied, running his claws up through the think thatch of dark brown that spilled down her back. And if you ask it of me, I’ll meet you anywhere, just to be certain that you’re safe.”

He felt her nod against his shoulder and, when she named a place, he repeated it to her. When she seemed reassured, he allowed his eyes to close, and he slept soundly with her wrapped in his arms. The sounds of preparation woke him the next morning, but when he reached out for Sablemane, he found that she was gone. Sighing in a kind of regret, he rolled from his pallet and went to find the rest of the group that he had been assigned to follow into the battle.

Except for that moment when the Grey Warden and the Ferelden queen had addressed the ranks of warriors, he never came close to the man again. Instead, his squad was directed to challenge the crowds of darkspawn in front of the main gates, and together with the werewolves who had adopted him, they faced down wave after wave of the twisted, malevolent creatures. But there was only so much that they — and the other humans and dwarves and golems — could do against the innumerable masses of the darkspawn, who seemed to spill from the earth below their feet and rise up again and again to face the swords and arrows and maces and claws of their foes. At one point, he swore that he had seen Sablemane lifted high into the sky by a darkspawn ogre, and in the next moment, her body had been torn in half and flung in opposite directions. 

Until that moment when he felt the earth shudder — and he had somehow known that the Archdemon was truly dead — he had been surrounded by too much in too many places. The stench of the grave followed the darkspawn and had made his stomach roil painfully, and the shrieks and moans of the battling pierced his hearing like so many sharply pointed knives. But suddenly, after that agonizing shriek had echoed around the city, the darkspawn had seemed to lose all of their impulse to fight, and they had turned and run, back into the depths of the earth and the darkness that bred them.

Looking around himself, Varassan realized that he had become completely separated from the other werewolves, and he chose that moment to make his escape. Dropping to all fours, he had raced to the edges of the battle, stopping only for a moment to drag a set of clothing from one of the soldier’s corpses. He had also been able to find a pack which he slung over his shoulders and then he was running again. He continued until he reached the coast of the Waking Sea, where he had at last resumed his original form so that he could negotiate his passage to the northern coast. Because he hadn’t had any kind of currency for decades — and there were too many people seeking to escape the war in Ferelden — he had been forced to work for his passage, but the thrill of the sea and the different strain on his muscles had been strangely satisfying to him. When he had finally landed on the northern shore, somewhere in the Free Marches, he had swiftly moved away from the other struggling survivors, crossing toward Kirkwall, but purposefully avoiding the city itself.

Remarkably, he had found a group of Dalish encamped outside the city, and they had welcomed him in his true form, just as Fionne had been welcomed all those decades ago by his own clan. It took some time and practice, but he managed to regain some of the skills with bow and sword that he had abandoned all those years ago when he had been transformed.

Eventually, though, he knew it was time for him to move on again. A resident of the Brecilian Forest had come to the clan with the hopes of learning the skills to create a potion or an unguent or a spell that might keep the werewolves who had been trapped in their animal forms from completely losing their humanity. And as much as Varassan was certain that he had never met her as Silverfang, he couldn’t control the dread that crept up his spine. He packed his backpack once again, thanked the keeper for the bow that she gave him as a gift, and walked out into the wilderness.

Eventually, he found another clan that would accept him, and he managed to become one of the important hunters for this small group of Dalish. But then, something happened in the city of Kirkwall, and it seemed that a war had suddenly sprung up around the completely uninvolved clan. And while the keeper and the lead hunters all fought over what they should do, he quietly stuffed his things into his backpack and got ready to run once again.

Then, one night, he overheard the keeper speaking with an emissary who had arrived just before the sun had set. The two of them had been discussing a conclave that was planned in order to negotiate a peaceful and equitable end to the battle between the mages and the templars who had once been tasked with the protection and monitoring of those who could use magic. He wasn’t close enough that they would be aware that he could overhear the conversation, but then again, none of the Dalish of this clan knew that his hearing was so remarkably enhanced, even in his elven form. Just as his sense of smell was. Luckily for him, however, his vision returned to its usual color patterns when he was in his original form. But that evening, he settled onto a seat on the far side of the fire from the keeper and their guest and listened as hard as he ever had.

“I don’t believe that I have anyone whom I could spare for such a journey,” the keeper, Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan, was saying. “I understand that you believe that we are unique among the Dalish, because we have created a permanent community here. And I know that this war between the mages and the templars could be dangerous to what we are trying to build.”

“That’s the point, Keeper,” the guest pressed urgently. “This conclave may be the only way to head off a conflagration that will consume all of Thedas in its burning destruction. One man. Or woman. That’s all that I ask. Just to be certain that your people are represented among those who negotiate the peace.”

The keeper was silent for a long moment, and then replied, “I might have someone. He wasn’t born into our clan but …”

“As long as he’s willing to represent what is best for the Dalish,” the guest replied, “I’ll take him. Could he leave with me at the rising of the sun.”

Deshanna sighed. “Yes. But you must let me speak with him. To be certain that he makes this decision of his own free will.”

Varassan nearly laughed aloud at that statement, because — in all of the years of his life as something that was between humanoid and animal — when had he been able to decide for himself? But he kept still and silent, pretending to listen to the tale of the Dread Wolf that the master storyteller was sharing with the children. Dread Wolf, he silently scoffed. If only they knew the truth.


	5. Nadir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varassan awakens in a cell in the basement of the Chantry of Haven. This can't be good.

_**Nadir —** The point with a negative ninety degree inclination in relation to the observer, or the point directly beneath their feet. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions,_

Varassan shook his head and moaned in pain, trying to move his arms into a more comfortable position and shifting uneasily on his knees. There was a fire burning in the palm of his left hand, and his entire body ached as if he had been running for leagues and leagues. Uncertainly, he tried to move his head again, but the motion seemed to put so much strain on the muscles in his neck that he stopped. Instead, he took in a deep breath and started to pry open the eyelids that seemed sealed together by some kind of crust. Or maybe the burning fire that was the flesh and tissues of his eyes had melted that area of his face together. In that moment, he couldn’t care, because so much of his body ached so very, very badly, and one or two sealed eyelids were undoubtedly the tiniest portions of that pain.

So instead of trying to open his eyes, he focused on the things that he could hear around him — the steady _drip, drip_ of a water leak somewhere behind him to his left; the creak of centuries-old boards; the scuttle of a rat somewhere near the place where he was kneeling. They weren’t at all the sounds that he was used to hearing in the forests or the camps of the Dalish who had accepted him over the years, but he could recognize them. And he certainly could recognize the smell of water and the tang of rat flesh when he scented it. Amazingly, he found some comfort in the fact that he still seemed to be alive and could smell and hear, and he was even more surprised when he managed to catch the sound of voices speaking in hushed tones somewhere close to where he was.

“Do you honestly think that it’s wise to hang so much of our hope on this man, Cassandra?” the first voice asked, her tone low and urgent, although Varassan couldn’t be sure that the emotion that was put into the question wasn’t feigned. It was also tinged by a uniquely Orlesian accent and had a musical quality that he rarely heard among the Dalish. As if the woman speaking actually wanted to be singing the phrases that she was uttering. “After all, what do we truly know about him? Or even why he was at the conclave? Perhaps he is the one who coordinated the explo- …”

“And survived?” a second voice cut into the first’s argument. Probably the Cassandra that the Orlesian had been questioning. Varassan was much less familiar with the accent of this woman’s voice, but he was certain that it came from somewhere to the north of Ferelden — somewhere in the wilds above the Waking Sea where he had actually explored so little in all the centuries of his existence. It also had a clipped, almost regimented precision to it, and he recognized it from the soldier commanders who had fought along side the werewolves in the battle against the Archdemon around the capital of Ferelden. “Lived only so that he could enjoy the interrogation that any person of average intelligence would expect after releasing such an earth-shattering event?”

“A slip in the planning?” the Orlesian suggested, and he thought that he could hear the shrug in her voice. “A failure to correctly calculate the blast radius or to make allowances for the power that he had unleashed? After all, I think that we would agree that there is nothing natural about the after-effects of the blast. So why would we believe that the explosion itself came from something as mundane as a gunpowder mixture?”

There was a long silence. Varassan could feel himself straining forward, but all his ears could catch was the scrape of metal against metal and the soft creak of aged leather. In frustration, he sniffed the air deliberately, feeling a pain shoot through his head at the effort. And his only reward was a strong aroma of humans and just a hint of the flower that the Fereldens called “Andraste’s Grace.” Squinting his still-closed eyes against the throbbing that started behind them, he inhaled deeply and willed himself to be more patient.

“Still,” the Orlesian began at last, “I wonder where he got that little thatch of white hair? Do you think he was injured as a child? He certainly doesn’t seem more than a few years into his adulthood, and it makes you wonder why the Dalish sent someone so young. And he certainly is very handsome.”

He heard Cassandra snort. “As if either of us would build trust simply upon a pretty face. If you believe that his looks would sway me, Leliana, then you have been without someone to warm your bed for much, much too long.”

The other woman, Leliana, laughed, and it was a soft, musical sound. It suddenly made a small shard of hope flare within his chest, and the aching his head eased slightly.

“No longer than you, my friend,” the Orlesian answered. “But if you want him, by all means, have him. You could do far, far worse than accept the attentions of that mysterious elf in there.”

“Yes, well,” Cassandra replied briskly, “we really don’t need to discuss that. At all! And it’s certainly not important to our decision whether to ask him to at least attempt to help us. There must be some reason why he was entrusted with the power that is trapped in his hand, if we can only learn how he might be able to use it.”

Power? Varassan wondered, trying once again to force his eyelids apart. To his surprise, he actually managed to pry them open, and he quickly looked around him to determine where he was. A cell. A dank, stony cell, separated from the rest of the building by a wall of iron bars that were beginning to rust at the joints. He was kneeling in the center of the floor, which confused him even more, and his hands were bound in a set of iron cuffs that were welded to a long, flat, metal bar that stretched his hands apart.

But it was the greenish glow that slipped between the fingers of his left hand that captured and held his attention. Slowly allowing his fist to unclench, he turned his hand palm up and stared into the swirling, pulsating energy that seemed to flicker in and out of the center of his hand. But even as he stared at it, he saw himself shift, and suddenly the same swirl was surrounded by fur and claws. Gasping in surprise, he forced himself back into his elven form and squeezed his fingers together around the wrongness that seemed to be woven into the structure of bones and skin that made up his left hand.

“What was that?” he heard Leliana ask, and he desperate struggled to slow the pounding drumbeat of his heart. “I think I heard him move, Cassandra. Perhaps now would be a good time for you to interrogate him.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the other woman agreed, and he heard that shifting sound of metal against metal again. “You should probably move into the Chantry with the others, and I’m sure that Josephine could use some help with her correspondence. Maybe you could take the dwarf with you, since he seems to prefer your company to mine?”

Leliana laughed. “That’s only because we’ve both been storytellers. We understand how to respect each others tales.”

“And you never had to interrogate him, did you?” Cassandra replied. “The efforts that I have to make as a Seeker just seem to create a wall between me and everyone else.”

“We all erect walls, Seeker Pentaghast. It’s knowing when to open the secret door to let someone in that’s important.”

Varassan barely caught the pad of soft, leather boots that trailed off into the distance, especially when it was masked by the click of harder soles on the stone floor of his prison. Metal rattled once again, and he closed his eyes just before the lock on the door to the dungeon room clicked open. The sharp snap of boots started again and then a key was inserted into the lock to his own cell and turned.

 _Flee!_ his mind suddenly screamed at him.

 _But why?_ another part argued. _You’ve been cursed with something that you can’t understand and might not be able to control. At least learn whether it’s even possible for you to live by yourself before you go rushing off into the uncertainty once again._

And so he knelt there, patiently waiting for the Seeker, Cassandra Pentaghast, to speak to him.

“What are you?”

Her first quest surprised him so much that his eyes flew open, and he looked up into her face. Because of their positions, she loomed over him, staring sternly down at him with her arms crossed on her chest and eyebrows pressed together in a frown. At first glance, she didn’t seem like someone with whom he should play games, but just then, he truly didn’t care.

“Dalish,” he said gruffly, his voice sounding harsh, much like it had when he had first started trying to speak with humans during his flight from Ferelden.

She frowned more deeply and shifted on her feet. “Yes, I know that. But I’ve …” Suddenly she squatted down in front of him, and with their heads on nearly the same level, he was able to more clearly see her face. There was a scar that ran along one side, just above the bone of her lower jaw, and another in the center of her opposite cheek. Her eyes were a warm, light brown, like melting caramel that he had sometimes tasted at the fairs that the Dalish might attend with the hopes of trading with other peoples. In contrast to the warm color of her eyes, her hair was pitch dark — like the spaces between the stars — cut short, certainly from the necessities of soldiering more than from any sense of what would actually compliment her face. Pressing forward onto the balls of her feet, she brought her face closer to his and studied him for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, almost a whisper. “You see, I was the one who accepted your nearly lifeless body when the soldiers brought you down from the crater. And as I was the one most deeply entrusted with the security of the Divine, it’s been my responsibility to guard you. To ensure that I could wring every bit of information from you when you awoke. But …”

She stopped again and looked over her shoulder, as if to ensure that they were still alone. “But I’ve seen … I’ve watched while you … changed. So before I end your life, simply on my own suspicions that you’ve been possessed by a demon, I want you to tell me what you are.”

Shaking his head, Varassan dropped his eyes from hers and stared at the green glow that oozed from between his fingers.

“You needn’t worry,” she continued, her voice still soft. “I don’t believe that anyone else has seen. Even the elf who’s been trying to heal you has only voiced suspicions that you aren’t what you seem to be. I almost believe that if he was left alone with you, he would end your life simply based on his own opinions.”

Reaching out, she took his chin into her fingers and lifted his head until he was forced to meet her eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. I need information more than anything else. But until I can be certain that you won’t harm anyone, you’ll remain here, in this cell, caged and chained.”

“Unless?” he croaked.

“Unless you tell me what you are. It’s fairly simple. Or perhaps you’d prefer to answer questions? I know it’s always tricky when you’re dealing with those who have been possessed by a demon, but …”

“Werewolf,” he muttered. “I’m able to transform between the shapes of a Dalish and that of a wolf-like creature.”

The woman snorted once again, the disbelief obvious on her face. “Those are tales that old grandmothers tell to keep their grandchildren from playing too close to the forest. There is no such thing as a werewolf.”

And then, because he truly didn’t care in that moment whether he lived or died, he shimmered and took on his wolfish form.

Cassandra Pentaghast gasped and dropped her hand from what was now a much longer jaw. A jaw that held a row of very sharp fangs that could have ripped her fingers off in mere moments. He met her eyes, noticing how much sharper and yet less colorful she looked to him now, and he whined softly when a pain spiked through his head again. Remarkably, however, it wasn’t as sharp as other aches had been, and he almost believed that he could feel his muscles repairing themselves, the tissues knitting back together while his remarkable recuperative powers took over control while he was in this form. But for some reason, he couldn’t hold the change, and he felt himself slip back into his Dalish body almost immediately.

“Werewolf!” he heard the woman gasp.

“Was there a reason why I should lie to you?” he asked sardonically, completely abandoning himself to his inability to care about his safety or future. “You claim that you saw the transformation before. Did you expect that I should be able to turn into something else?”

She shook her head. “I saw glimpses of the change,” she replied, her voice suddenly uncertain. “But it was never total, only shimmering hints of what might be. I could never be completely reassured of what I had seen, especially because I felt that it would be unwise to share the information with anyone else.”

“I can control it, you know,” Varassan said, but then he looked down at the green glow in his palm. “Or I used to be able to. I’m afraid that this unique little gift is interfering with my ability to shift at will and keep myself in my desired state.”

“Yes,” she agreed, reaching out to lift the shackle that held his left hand bound, “Solas had mentioned that the energies of this … thing … were volatile. But perhaps, if they were enhanced or siphoned off …” She seemed to consider the swirling vortex in his hand for a moment longer before she rose to her feet. “I have need of you, and it’s impossible for me to explain why if you’re imprisoned in this cell. If I unshackle you and open the door, do you swear that you’ll not attempt to escape?” She fumbled with a ring of keys that she had hooked at her waist while she waited for his response, but he chose not to reply. After all, had there really been any kind of option offered to him in her words? When she had located the key that she wanted, she squatted down again. “I should warn you that if you appear outside of this cell without me, every soldier in our encampment will try to kill you. Surely, someone will succeed.”

“Better to die by the hand of the enemy I know then?” he sneered, meeting her eyes. “Is that it, Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast?”

“How did you …” she gasped, her hands stilling just within a hair of slipping into the keyhole for his shackles. She stared into his face, and he could see her doubts chasing each other across her features. “How did you know my name?” she finally demanded.

“Wolfish hearing,” he explained. “Wolfish sight. Wolfish scenting. Greater gifts than this …” He waved his left hand randomly. “This wrongness in my hand.”

“Yes, well, it’s yours for some reason that none of us can understand,” she answered, slipping the shackle key home and turning the lock. “So I suggest that we discover whether there’s any possible way that you can make it — and yourself — useful to us.”

He nodded and rose to his feel, gently rubbing at his wrists with the tips of his fingers for a moment while he looked around his cell. To his great surprise, his backpack was stowed in one corner, and he went to it quickly to retrieve more than the pants and drawers that he was currently wearing. Reaching into the bag, he dragged a linen shirt over his head and then tugged on a heavier jacket.

“Don’t you have any armor?” Cassandra asked from behind him. “Or a weapon? We’re going into an unsafe situation, after all, and I may not be able to protect you and myself adequately on the journey up the mountain.”

“I was forced to abandon my sword and bow when I came to the conclave,” he replied. “And I haven’t worn more than some simple leathers for …” He paused. Since he had been transformed. But only the Dread Wolf might know how long ago that had been. “For some time.”

She nodded. “We’ll find what we can along the way. There will be a few stations of guards that might have extra equipment.”

Tugging on his extra pair of boots — he had absolutely no idea where the other pair had been lost — he stamped his feet into the depths and looked over at the Seeker. For another long moment, she studied his face, and then she turned away from him.

That motion didn’t stop him from hearing her murmur to herself. “I wish I understood why I feel like I can tru- …” And then she fell silent.

“Like you can what, Seeker?” he asked impulsively.

Looking over her shoulder, she frowned at him. “Don’t do that,” she said sternly. “You may have special gifts, but if you use them on me again, I’ll …”

He grinned lopsidedly at her. “Certainly, Seeker. Keep my eavesdropping to myself. I can agree to that condition.”

Cassandra stared at him, her fingertips gripping her upper arms. “Let’s go, Lavellan.”

“Please,” he said, keeping his feet exactly where they were, “don’t call me that. I’m actually not a member of their clan.”

“So?” the Seeker returned.

“Varassan. That’s my name. You can use it, if you’re comfortable with that.”

The woman nodded and stepped out of the way, gesturing for him to precede her from the cell. “Varassan. After you.”


	6. Occulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varassan doesn't want to be the Herald of Andraste, but there might be some benefits.

_**Occultation —** The act of one celestial body obscuring another as a result of moving between the observer and the object being observed. The most well known occultations are the lunar and solar eclipses. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

Varassan looked around the table in what they were calling the war room in the Chantry in Haven, the little village closest to where the Divine’s conclave had been held in the Temple of the Urn of Sacred Ashes. The spot that had been destroyed by some kind of explosion that had wiped his memory of the event and embedded the strange swirl of power into his hand. For some reason, they were all staring at him, as if he had the secret to solve their problems, but honestly, he was as lost as they were. Once he began trying to remember anything about that afternoon at the conclave, he had realized that his memory was completely blank. Even the stories that Cassandra and Leliana had shared with him about what the guards had seen when he had reemerged into their reality had seemed unlikely fictions, not triggering even a glimmer of response from his mind.

And so, when they looked at him expectantly, he had no response. What was he supposed to do for them? And why, in the name of anything that he had ever held as holy, did they think that — because the swirl of power was embedded in his hand — he had been chosen by some human god to deliver a message of hope and redemption.

“I’m not your Herald,” he repeated, looking at all their faces. “I wasn’t chosen for this. It’s all an accident.”

They stared back at him: Cassandra, the Seeker and Right Hand of the Divine; Leliana, the Left Hand of the Divine and the spymaster; Josephine Montilyet, the diplomat and Ambassador of the undertaking; and Cullen Rutherford, the head of the armies. They were a powerful little group on their own, and they certainly were strong enough and well-connected enough to make whatever alliances and agreements that they needed to make to succeed in their new operation, which they were calling an Inquisition. Even he word set his teeth on edge, and the greatest desire in his heart was that he could simply run, escape, get as far away from this insanity as he possibly could.

But somehow, they had all looked to him. Because the sickening swirl filled his left palm, he had suddenly eclipsed any perception of power that the other people in this room might ever have been able to claim. And they all knew it. They had known it from the moment that they had led him into the crater of the Temple of Andraste, and he had closed the first large tear in the sky with the power that was trapped in his hand. They had known when the survivors of the explosion and the refugees from the mage and templar war who had begun to gather in Haven had cheered him when he had reappeared in the village. Cheered him, specifically, not the members of the Inquisition.

And he had heard their whispers — by the Dread Wolf, how could he miss them! They followed him through the little pathways between the few remaining buildings and along the hallways of the Chantry. Even the lowest-pitched voices reached his ears, and he had begun to recognize the stench of their anxiety when he passed. As a result, he was eager to pursue any opportunity that he could to absent himself from Haven and its Chantry and the camps of desperate humanity that had sprung up around them.

“Nevertheless …” Leliana started, but the Seeker interrupted her.

“Unfortunately, we need to approach every effort we make to fulfill the Divine’s plan with the tools that we’re given,” Cassandra said, pacing toward the opposite end of the table. “And as much as you may not want to take the leadership position among us, you are the most appropriate tool for the task.”

“You must remember that we’re here to support and advise you, Herald,” the diplomat, Josephine, added. “You truly aren’t on your own, as much as it may seem that way.”

“Yes, well,” he growled in a low voice, “you’re not the ones who will be the focus of their arrow fire or receive the assassin’s knife in his back. You’re marking me for death with your little program of trying to reassert your religion’s dominance over the people who only want to be free to live without suspicion and fear.”

Cullen cleared his throat. “As we move forward, we’ll be able to develop more highly trained bodyguards to travel with you to any necessary assignations. We could also curtail your travels, if you’re certain that you life is in danger.”

“No, we can’t do that,” Leliana argued. “He needs to be seen. By the Maker, the people _need_ to see him. Even if you won’t claim the Herald of Andraste title, it’s what the people are calling you.”

“Because _you_ started calling me that. They’re only following your example. So reasonably, you could start calling me ‘liar,’ and they’d follow just as willingly.” While he watched, Leliana looked around at the other leaders of the Inquisition, and he had to admire her determination when she continued her arguments.

“You can’t simply shrug off the duties that the people have assigned to you,” she replied. “It’s by their will that you’ve been selected their Herald, and it’s by their determination that the Chantry will reassert its influence over their lives.”

Varassan simply stared at the spymaster, wondering whether her opinion represented the majority of the other leaders of the Inquisition. Not since he had been transformed against his will had he felt so cornered by the situations that surrounded his life. And yet, he knew that — just as he had under that first full moon when Fionne had told him the truth — he had no choice. He had to fight, or he would die.

Sighing deeply, he turned away from the faces that were looking at him and stared longingly at the door. After a moment, however, he said over his shoulder, “Do what you will. I’ll do what I can to forward your designs, but please, all of you — don’t ever expect me to be happy about any of this.”

They murmured their thanks behind him and moved toward the exit. Cullen was the first to leave, undoubtedly eager to return to the training of their new troops, and Josephine quickly followed, her eyes glued to the clipboard that seemed to never leave her hands. When Leliana crossed in front of him, he met her eyes for a moment before she paused and reached out to place her fingertips against his arm.

“The reluctant ones quite often are the greatest leaders,” she murmured. “That’s what I always believed about the Hero of Ferelden.”

The Hero of Ferelden. Varassan felt his lip curl back from his teeth at the thought of the man who had made promises to the werewolves of the Brecilian Forest, only to choose what was best for his own needs and for his armies in the long run. But he had known from the beginning that Leliana had never recognized him from among the beasts who had fought for the Hero of Ferelden, especially because he had always been in his wolfish form when he had been near the Grey Warden’s party. In the end, he had to admit that she might be right: if he was forced into this role as the Herald of Andraste, he might find himself making choices that were based more on the benefit to the battles that they were expecting to fight than what might be best for the people involved. Accepting her comment in the spirit in which he believed she had offered it, he whispered his thanks and watched while she exited the room.

“I’m sorry,” he heard Cassandra say behind him. He turned and faced her, watching while her fingers trailed aimlessly across the surface of the table in front of her. “I’ve forced you into a terrible position, something I admit that I knew from the beginning you never wanted. I … I should have thought more thoroughly about the consequences of involving you in this when we started.”

“Trust me, Seeker,” he said, feeling himself drawn to the distress that he could see on her face and in the rigid lines of her body, “this isn’t the first situation that I’ve been thrust into against my will.”

She shook her head. “Still, I would ask that you accept my apology. As much as I know that the Inquisition needs someone like you who can inspire us in some way, I … I simply …”

Walking along the edge of the large, map-laden table, he came to her side and looked over at her, hoping to catch the warmth of her caramel eyes. Cautiously, fearing that even the smallest gesture of sympathy might be rejected by this very experienced warrior, he reached out and slipped one hand around the fingers that were still tracing across the table top. Her hand stopped, and she looked up at him, a shocked denial slipping quickly across her face. Instead of letting his fingers continue to cradle hers, however, he slowly drew his hand away, just allowing the tip of one finger to barely graze across her flesh until he couldn’t reasonably touch her any longer.

“The reluctant hero,” he teased, shifting away from her in the hopes of relieving the sudden tightness of his trousers. “Perhaps bards will sing songs about me some day.”

“Or Varric will make you the hero of one of his novels,” she laughed nervously. “That would be something amazing, don’t you think?”

He frowned. “Varric writes novels? Surely you mean histories, filled with dry facts and reports on troop movements.”

Cassandra laughed lightly and shook her head. “Romantic tales of adventure and intrigue.”

“Really? Have you read any of them? Do you have your own copies?”

While he watched, a rosy blush raced up into her cheeks, and she quickly turned away from him to stare at the wall beside her. Since the moment when she had faced him down in the cell in the basement of the Chantry, he had to admit that he had been fascinated by this woman’s remarkable combination of tough warrior and gentle caretaker. At odd moments, he had found her somewhere nearby, observing him from what he was certain she believed was a safe distance. At first, he was irked by what he thought of as a continual surveillance of his actions, but on the one occasion when he confronted her about it, she had merely blushed and walked away from him. Her response had intrigued him, as had the pink color that had flushed her face, and he had begun to find moments when he could be alone with her, simply to discover what he could do or say that would cause her to blush again.

“Of course, if you find pleasure in reading Varric’s novels,” he said slowly, “I would never tease you about that. You have even less time to find pleasures in your days than I do, and I wouldn’t ever want to take those moments away from you.”

“I do enjoy them,” Cassandra replied reluctantly. “And you might find them entertaining, too. I could loan you the first one in the series, if you think …” Her voice trailed off, and he saw her look over at him through the screen of her long, dark eyelashes.

He sighed — a little dramatically — and admitted, “I’m afraid that I don’t read, Seeker. The Dalish have storytellers who maintain our lore, and I’ve never even considered that being able to decipher the scribbles on a parchment might be useful to me.”

“Truly?” she questioned. “As we move forward in our efforts, your being able to read messages could become vital. Perhaps we could persuade Varric to teach you the letters and some basic words, or maybe Josephine …”

“You’re the one who introduced me to the idea,” he suggested. “Why don’t you teach me?”

“Oh, no! Oh, I couldn’t! I mean …” Varassan saw that she had blushed again, but he was determined to make the most of this moment. Cassandra intrigued him, and he wanted to learn more about her. Private reading lessons would give them time alone that could lead to conversations, and then …

“It seems reasonable that I will need the skill, Seeker,” he said, trying to sound stern and reasonable at the same time. “We could begin this evening, after our meal. Bring the first of Varric’s novels. I think I’d enjoy listening to you read to me.”

“I don’t … I think …” she started and then stopped. She looked over at him again and seemed to come to a decision. “I’ll meet you in your chamber after I’ve made certain that the troops have been fed.”

“Until this evening, then, Seeker,” he replied and turned on his heel to exit into the Chantry proper.

After he had left the war room, Josephine immediately claimed his attention, and Varassan found that any thought that he might have had of planning for his evening alone with Cassandra Pentaghast was quickly lost in the bustle of his day. In fact, he didn’t even remember that they had made the appointment until he had started walking down the hallway to his room and found her at his side with a large volume tucked under one arm.

“Seeker,” he said by way of greeting. “Is that one of Josephine’s clipboards that you have there? I’m surprised that she would let anyone else carry it.”

“No, Herald,” she answered, and he saw immediately that he had made her uncomfortable. “It’s one of … I thought we had agreed that …”

He stopped suddenly and looked at the book under her arm again. Slapping his hand against his forehead, he laughed, “By the Dread Wolf! We made an agreement that I should begin to learn to read tonight. I must apologize for forgetting, Seeker.”

“No, no,” Cassandra replied, “I should have asked before I approached you this evening. We can make arrangements for another night, if you’re too tired or have other responsibilities.”

“Don’t be silly,” he replied, opening his door for her and moving to the side so that she could enter first. “We’ll have to take these opportunities when they’re presented to us, otherwise I’ll never learn anything.” Before he entered the room, he looked around the Chantry, noticing the people crossing the open spaces and the little conversations that were taking place around him. More than one set of eyes was focused on his doorway, and he realized what would happen to Cassandra’s reputation if he closed the portal behind him. So instead of swinging the tall piece of wood into place, he grabbed a chair that was beside the door and used it to prop it open, allowing anyone who might pass by or the observers on the other side of the room to see exactly what was going on in his chamber.

“So, where should I sit?” he asked, walking over to where the Seeker was standing in the center of his room. “I suppose that the bed would be inconvenient. And inappropriate.”

Even though the fire was the only light in his room, he managed to catch the increased color that washed across her cheeks. Striding to the hearth, he retrieved a twig and stepped evenly around the room, lighting as many of the candles that were lined up around the space as he thought would be necessary.

“Perhaps here,” Cassandra suggested, taking one of the chairs beside the little table that was near the window of his room. “I’ll be able to rest the book on the surface and then I can show you how the letters relate to the story.”

He nodded and took the chair beside her, quickly looking over his shoulder to be certain that everyone could clearly see the two of them at the table. Looking down at the cover of the book, he studied the lettering and then reached out to trace one finger across the lines and curves. “What does this say here? Is this a report on the quality of the book?”

The Seeker laughed and shook her head. “It’s the title of the series that Varric has created. You see, he’s written a number of books about the same characters.”

“Like a saga? That kind of tales can occupy the clan for a number of nights when the storyteller chooses to tell them?”

She considered his words for a moment before she nodded. “You could think of it that way. In any event, the title of this series is _Swords and Shields_ , and … well, I will admit something to you as long as you swear that you will never reveal my secret to anyone else.”

“You may depend on me, Cassandra.” He purposefully said her name with just a little extra warmth and saw that she blushed again. But as she had already admitted that she would be confessing something to him, he felt that the color in her cheeks was completely appropriate.

And then she giggled, and the sound sent a thrill straight into his groin. Leaning closer, she traced one of her fingertips across the picture that had been printed onto the cloth cover of the novel, and he saw that she lingered on the image of a rakish gentleman who was wielding a sword.

“If I were ever to meet a man just like the hero in this novel,” she whispered, and he leaned closer so that he could feel the brush of her breath against his skin, “I would certainly lose myself to him. It would be impossible for me to resist him.”

Suddenly, Varassan was very determined to learn to read as quickly as possible.


	7. Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lost in a blizzard while he tries to escape from the ruin of Haven after Corypheus's attack, Varassan's thoughts of Cassandra Pentaghast lead him on.

_**Gravity —** Gravity is the attractive force which governs the motion of the celestial bodies. Gravity controls the orbits of all planets in our solar system as well as our solar system’s relative motion to the Universe. It also plays a significant role in the distribution of mass throughout the Universe. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

Varassan shivered and tried to wrap his arms even more tightly around his wolfish form, but it was too cold, too snowy, too windy for the simple act of clasping his limbs against his body to make any difference. For once in his many years of living, he found that he was grateful for the change that he could make in its form. In fact, if he was perfectly honest, his werewolf body was probably the only thing that was keeping him alive and moving in the right direction in these seemingly infinite mountains. The ones that formed a backdrop to the now destroyed village of Haven. The ones that had seemed to bulwark them against attack while they worked to bring the fledgling Inquisition into being.

The attack had come from the other direction, that was certain, but they had been precisely as unprepared as he had imagined that they would be. And all that the tall, snow-draped mountains had been able to provide them was a route of escape. Oh, and the deadly avalanche that he had been able to unleash to take out a wide swath of the enemy forces. But it hadn’t been enough, and Haven had fallen, especially when the leader of the enemy forces had chosen to confront him — alone except for the dragon that he had ridden over the temporary battlements that the soldiers of the Inquisition had managed to erect around the perimeter of the village of Haven.

Squinting his eyes against the glare that reflected piercingly from the great mounds of snow around him, he paused for a moment and tried to determine whether he was still traveling in the correct direction. Along the pathway across ice fields and between the mountain’s sheer cliffs, he had occasionally found signs that the other members of the Inquisition and the people that they had been protecting had passed this way. A dead pack animal. A pile of supplies that, for some reason, had been abandoned. Books and scrolls that seemed useless when you were simply trying to negotiate the drifts of snow and the biting wind.

And the bodies. He was also grateful for the increased sense of smell that his wolfish form provided him, because it allowed him avoid the corpses that littered the passage between the mountains. To his great relief, there were actually very few of them, and from the odors that rose up around them, they had been doomed from the moment they had dragged themselves — or been dragged — from the wreck of Haven. There was too strong a stench of blood and viscera near those snow-dusted piles for him to believe that the people under them could have survived, even if they had managed to trudge to a place of safety.

He wished that he was there, wherever that place of safety was. All he could think of was holding a cup of something hot in his hands and wrapping two or three blankets around his elven shoulders. Extending his fingers toward a blazing fire. Settling down on a pallet and …

And laying his head in Cassandra Pentaghast’s lap.

He huffed out his breath in surprise and watched the curls of steam float away from him in the frosty air. Over the past months, he had spent more than a few hours thinking of the Seeker, often in ways that had absolutely nothing to do with the Inquisition or his position as its leader-in-spite-of-himself. From the beginning, he had turned to her for guidance, perhaps because he had experienced so much compassion from her during their first moments together. As much as she had been suspicious of him, she had been more curious than deadly — more eager to gather facts than she had been to keep everyone around her safe from an unnamed danger. And he had appreciated her forbearance. It was only through her willingness to learn more about him that he was still alive.

She had also been the member of the leadership of the Inquisition who had actually expressed the most interest in helping him with aspects of his life that didn’t have anything specifically to do with the Inquisition. When they both were freed from their duties, Cassandra had come to his room and worked to help him master the skill of reading. Of course, Varassan had actually spent more of the time simply listening to her voice and studying her face while she read the lines that Varric had put down on paper. To be honest, he had missed some of the instructions that she had tried to give him during those first nights, especially when he became lost in the sound of her voice and the sight of her rosy pink cheeks. The dwarf had a very vivid imagination, Varassan had to admit, and the author wasn’t at all shy about _any_ of the aspects of the lives that his heroes lived in their imagined lands, no matter how private.

Eventually, however, he had begun to see how the squiggles and lines on the papers could be interpreted as letters and words. But their reading lessons had ended when they had learned that Haven was going to be attacked.

Perhaps they could resume, if only he could find her, somewhere on the other side of the curtains of snow. Maybe she would open her arms to him, hold him close while he shivered and shook, using her own soft body to help drive away the freezing that had settled deep into his bones. Varassan let his eyes slide shut for a moment, picturing himself resting his head against the swell of her bosom, her fingers trailing through his dark hair …

In the next moment, however, he forced his eyes open and realized that he stumbled to all fours in the space between two massive piles of snow. He could feel a warm, reassuring languor started to fill him, as if he could simply stop and all the trials that were haunting him would come to an end. He could forget the Inquisition, forget the Herald of Andraste, forget the armies and the battle with Corypheus, forget …

Forget ever having the opportunity to make Cassandra Pentaghast his own. 

Yes, he admitted, he would have to forget that, too. While he dragged himself back onto his hind legs, he idly wondered whether the Seeker would mourn for him. Certainly there wouldn’t be a moment when she would break down in front of the other members of the Inquisition, but maybe some evening, alone in her room, when she was staring at the front cover of _Swords and Shields_ , she might recall how they had read the book together and a single, glistening tear might slip across her face.

Shaking his head, Varassan had to laugh at his own sentimentality. Over the long years of his life, he had needed to protect himself from the emotional entanglements that relationships could cause, and for decades, his couplings with members of the opposite sex — whether humanoid or werewolf — had been based on the need to release his carnal tensions. He could honestly say that he hadn’t felt an emotional connection to any of the females he had coupled with since … since Fionne. Undoubtedly, after all of the betrayals that he had suffered at the hands of his creator, he had been wary of allowing emotions to become part of his relationships. But Cassandra Pentaghast and the members of her little Inquisition seemed to have changed him. In deeply affecting ways.

But they all expected so very much of him. And certainly, as some point in the future, he would disappoint them.

It might be easier, another part of him argued, to simply allow himself to be lost in the blizzard that was swirling around him. He could lose the path, stagger off the edge of a cliff, or shout down another avalanche that could bury him so deeply that he would never recover. Plus the impact of the weight of all that snow …

He looked up and suddenly realized that he was in nearly the same place that he had been when he had collapsed onto his hands. Staggering forward again, he told himself that he couldn’t stop, that they were all in a state of despair waiting to know what had happened to him. He also knew that, if he should be lost, the Inquisition would crumble around them, because as much as he hated being their figurehead, he was vital to their success. He acted as a buffer between the members of their leadership and the people who made demands of them every day, and he could make decisions that the others might cringe at, simply because it was the best for their organization.

That image that he had created of Cassandra crying over her loss of him rose up in his imagination again, and he suddenly could swear that he could hear her calling to him. Somewhere in the groan of the wind, her voice was there, entangled in the rush of the snow past his face and the bite of the icy chill. It was a sweet, soft moaning, a lover’s whisper in the contentment after lovemaking, and he knew that he wanted it to be his. If he could hear his name on her lips — not that stupid, human-imposed “Herald” title — he would risk everything, even his life.

And so, with Cassandra as his lodestone, the force that dragged him forward, he continued. One paw stepped forward, and then the other, again and again.

Until finally, he could step no further. Sinking to the ground beside a pile of snow, he huffed out his breath, feeling a sense of despair at his failure. Surely he had been strong enough; surely he had been determined enough; but the passage through the snow fields had been too much. He could feel his frustration tightening within him, like the tautness of a bowstring before the arrow is released to its target. In order to allow the motion to find its expression, he made a slicing gesture at the pile of snow beside him. To his surprise, his paw didn’t strike the sharp edge of a hidden rock, as he had expected, but something that was softer and skittered into the nearby drifts, quickly hidden under the blanket of white.

Curious, he levered up onto all fours and crept after the mysterious item, certain that it actually was a rock and that his extremities were simply too chilled by the air and snow for him to feel its hardness.

But it wasn’t. And when he saw the object in the piercing brightness of the afternoon sun, he could feel his heart leap in his chest.

 _Swords and Shields._ It was a copy of the novel that Cassandra had been using to teach him to read. Reaching out uncertainly, he opened the cover and gasped when he saw the Keeper’s name inscribed on the first page. Her own copy. She had abandoned her treasured book in the hopes that he might find it and gather his courage once again. It was only by the slimmest chance that he had located this particular, snow-draped pile, however, so it seemed that she must have been desperate, already beginning to despair that he might actually complete his escape from the wreck of Haven. Had she left the book behind as a reminder of him and the pain that the memories could cause her, then? Or as a carrot to draw him on, like ox in a yoke?

He drew the book closer, cradling it against his chest to protect it from the continuing power of the blizzard, but while he was moving it, he saw a small scrap of parchment tumble from between the pages. Reacting immediately, he snatched the scrap from the air and raised it toward his eyes.

 _Soon_ , it said. _Keep on._

Varassan had to smile at the economy of Cassandra’s words and the simplicity of what she had written. Even in her uncertainty and fear, she had remembered that he was only beginning to learn to read, and she had chosen words he was certain to understand almost immediately. And then he considered what she had scribbled on the parchment. _Soon._ Did that mean that he was nearly there, almost at the place of safety that the Inquisition had found? Was this message as much an encouragement as it was a warning? Because she was aware of his ability to change his form, had she hiked back up along the trail to forewarn him that he was close to being back with the Inquisition?

He stared at the paper for another long moment before he tucked it back among the pages of the book. Forcing his body to transform — which was always a more painful process because of the contravening power of the Mark on his left hand or paw — he shrugged off his backpack and pulled out the clothing that tore irreparably when he shifted. Slowly, because his limbs seemed determined to remain frozen in place, he tugged his gear back into place: socks and boots first, then shirt, vest, and leathers. His bow had been strapped to his back, along with his quiver full of arrows, and he had to shake out the layers of snow that had accumulated around the long shafts. Carefully tucking the volume of _Swords and Shields_ into his pack with the few remaining items he always carried with him, he started forward along the only way that seemed to be a path between the mountains.

But as much as the draw of Cassandra’s encouragement had reignited his desire to continue, his body, especially in its elven form, had nearly been drained of its strength. Step after step, he could feel himself weakening, and it was only the promise of that one word — _soon_ — that kept him moving.

“Herald!” He heard the world like a whisper in the aching howl of the wind. Turning his head, he tried to pinpoint the direction from which the sound had come. He squinted his eyes tightly together and peered into the distance. Surely there were figures there in the distance. Surely they had finally found him, and he was rescued from the incessant howl of the elements around him.

He rushed forward a few steps and them stumbled to the ground again. His very elven knees ached mightily with the impact and the pain that immediately spiked through his legs. But he was too exhausted to even moan, and he could feel his shoulders slump in surrender. It was too much, beyond what any mortal could achieve even with an immortal form and superhuman senses.

He knew that he was finished. But he had done his best.

“Here he is!” He thought that it was Cullen’s voice that called out then, but it didn’t matter. All that he cared about was the warmth that seemed to blanket him, the silence that settled around him while he collapsed to the ground, not even minding the bite of the snow against the skin of his cheek and along the long edge of his ear.

It surprised him when he was later able to pry his eyes open, to rise from a pallet in a tent lit by a single candle, and to move among the members of the Inquisition and those they were protecting. While they paused to mourn their dead, he slipped back into that tent, his heart too heavy with the knowledge that they had lost so much because of him. Settling down under his blanketss, he tried to shut out the music of their lament, but it seemed to seep into his bones, its gentle rhythm reminding him that he had failed. Once again, he hadn’t been enough. He would never be enough.

He heard a soft rap on one of the poles that held his tent upright, but all he could do was grunt in response. When the flap lifted, he was suddenly aware of _her_ scent, the musk and sweat of Cassandra Pentaghast. But he was too deeply consumed by his failure and the loss that the Inquisition had suffered, and he turned away from her, drawing his blankets up around his frostbitten ears.

“Herald?” Cassandra asked, and he heard the tent flap fall back into place. “Varassan? Will you send me away?”

He sighed. “No, Seeker,” he replied, rolling onto his back again. “You may enter.”

He listened for the creak of her armor, that distinctive rub of metal against metal while she crossed to his side. With a practiced motion, she slipped onto the ground beside him, and in the light of the single candle that was burning on a box near his head, he was able to see the concerned little frown that pressed her eyebrows together. Suddenly, he was filled with an urge to reach out and smooth those lines of worry away, but he kept his hands where they were, safely enclosed by the layers of blankets that covered his body.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, breaking the silence between them with her brief expression of her own failures. That she could feel that she hadn’t performed at her very best for him made Varassan want to laugh, and he couldn’t control the smile that spread across his face. “You smile?” she barked, completely snapped out of her self-pity by his reaction. “If you think that I’m speaking out of turn or that I should confess to the sisters of the Chantry …”

“No, it’s not that,” he replied, rising on one elbow to study her face. In the gleam from the candle, her scars seemed like deep slashes in the creamy evenness of her skin, and his fingers itched once again to reach out and smooth them away. Or not. Maybe she wore them proudly, like badges of the trials that had made her who she was. He was about to ask her about them when she spoke.

“Then what is it, Herald?”

And he smiled more broadly, because he knew that she only called him by that name and in that tone when she was annoyed with him.

“It’s that I was just lying here, feeling that I had completely failed the Inquisition in the first test of our forces,” he said evenly, stretching back out on his pallet and lacing his fingers together behind his head. “But if you’re willing to take all the blame, then I’m happy to leave it to you.”

Her jaw dropped open, and she stared at him in shock. Of course, he had known that she was expecting a different response, some opportunity to plead her case, enumerating the precise tally of the ways that she had failed the Inquisition in their first major battle. But he had taken that opportunity away from her by simply allowing her to take the blame — for all of it. The poor preparations and the inexperience of their troops. And the incomplete intelligence that they had received about their enemy. When he had first made his comment, he had expected that it would help her realize that she actually wasn’t at fault, just as much as he wasn’t responsible for the entirety of their failure.

But he hadn’t been prepared for her to grasp the game that he was playing and turn the tables on him.

“You misunderstand me completely, Herald,” she replied in an even voice, but he could see a hint of a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. “I was only wishing to be forgiven for following your order and abandoning you to the destruction of Haven when you sent the rest of us into the mountains. Surely, if I had remained with you, you would have arrived at our camp much, much sooner.”

“Because, in all your armor, you could have plowed a pathway for me? Yes, perhaps you should have remained behind. I could also have stood behind you …”

“Oh, you are impossible!” she huffed at him, crossing her arms on her breastplate and staring determinedly at the fabric that made up the tent in front of her.

His smile widened. Reaching up, he entangled his fingers in hers where they were resting against her upper arm. She started and looked down at the picture that their clasped hands created and then sighed in some kind of pleasure or longing. He couldn’t tell which.

“But you would’ve done it, wouldn’t you, Seeker? You would have given your life to safeguard my own?” He angled up onto his elbow again, his hand clinging to hers while he studied her face in the light from the candle. But her gaze remained steadfastly downcast, as if she couldn’t believe that those were her own fingers that he was holding so very tenderly. Levering closer, he whispered, “Because I would do that for you, Cassandra Pentaghast. Given up everything that I have to ensure your safety. Even my own life.”

He heard her quick intake of breath and then he was drowning in the warm caramel of her eyes. Her lips were deliciously parted, almost inviting him to kiss her, and he started to lean closer, determined to taste the honey of her mouth — even if it was only this one time.

“Herald?” He stopped moving at the sound of Leliana’s voice. “I had needed to speak with you, if you’re free.”

As if she had been struck by a whiplash, Cassandra was suddenly on her feet, pulling her fingers out of his with that simple motion. Settling back onto his pallet, Varassan silently cursed his luck and motioned for the Seeker to admit anyone who was waiting for him. After all, it was never just one person, was it? There would be more.

Just as there might be more moments with Cassandra, if he could just determine how to make them happen.

Before she could leave, he caught her attention. “You might want to look in my backpack before you go, Seeker,” he said evenly, sitting up and preparing to meet whoever entered his tent next. Of course, if he was going to have to have strategy meetings, he was going to need more light, and he started looking for more candles.

“My book!” he heard her gasp, and he turned to look at where she was standing with the volume clutched against her breastplate. “Thank you, Herald, for bringing it down the mountain with you. I had only been able to hope that you would find it.”

He smiled at her, wishing that there was time to do more. “It gave me courage, just as you had meant for it to do. And it allowed me to put myself back in a proper state to be discovered.”

She nodded and walked to the tent flap. In the next moment, she had swung the book behind her back to shield it from those members of the Inquisition who were entering. And then she was gone.

Varassan sighed. Gone again. But the next time, he would do better. He swore it.


	8. Waxing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life at Skyhold has its challenges for the new leader of the Inquisition.

_**Waxing Moon —** The term used to describe the period of the Moon as it moves from a New Moon to a Full Moon, increasing in visibility with respect to an Earth-bound observer. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

He stared down at the peaks that surrounded the fortification — “Skyhold” Solas had told them it was called — and wondered how he had arrived here. Nothing in any of his long years of life had prepared him for a luxurious room at the top of the fortification’s main keep, one that looked out over a snow-capped expanse of mountains and valleys. Or that he would now be the titular head of the human’s organization: the Inquisitor, so named by the people who were now crowding into every inch of the keep, relieved to finally find a place of shelter and service. No, his life had been a continual process of lurking in the shadows, only emerging when he couldn’t control his longing to be with others or when he was certain that he had found a group that could protect him as well as he could protect himself on his own.

And certainly nothing had prepared him for this kind of luxury. By the Dread Wolf, he had a bed! With pillows! Those were something that he had only seen in the _aravels_ of the healers of the clans. And there was a long, flat, wooden surface that he could use … well, he wasn’t actually certain what it could be used for, except that he kept imagining Cassandra Pentaghast spread out across it, naked and alluring. Someone had called it a “desk” and mentioned that he could read and write reports and correspondence there, but he would so much prefer to use it for the reasons that were called up in his imagination when he thought about the Seeker.

Varassan shifted back from the balcony, suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer, nearly infinite plunge that he could see if he looked down. Then he laughed at himself: after all, his entire life — since that moment when Fionne had transformed him — had been a plunge into the unknown.

Some day he would hit the bottom, he knew that.

But not today.

Tugging at the hem of his vest, Varassan started down the stairs, following them until he reached the main room of the keep: an audience chamber or dining hall. No one was precisely certain, but they had managed to clear it out adequately so that the Inquisition could use it to greet visiting dignitaries and other petitioners. Looking down its length, he could just see the clear, blue skies above the mountain tops, and he could feel that desire rising up inside of him. That need to run, escape, _flee!_ Tightening his hold on his emotions to the point that that particular one was strangled, he turned and opened the door next to the one that led to his bedroom.

This room was where their Ambassador, Josephine Montilyet, had her office. And, as usual, she was seated behind her desk with her dark head bent over a collection of letters, dispatches, and proposals. When he let the door slip from between his fingers and snap shut, she looked up quickly and then nodded respectfully at him.

“Inquisitor,” she said, and he could still hear the caution in her voice, even after all these weeks. “Is there something that I can do for you this morning?”

Shaking his head, he crossed to the corner of her desk and perched on the one open space that he could see. “I was just wondering whether there was anything demanding my immediate attention. I was thinking of going out into the mountains for a few days …”

“I’m not certain that would be advisable, Inquisitor,” Josephine responded, picking up a stick of wax and igniting it. While he watched, she dripped the melted, crimson substance onto the letter that she had been writing. Then, with a definite sense of glee, she slammed a heavy, brass stamp into the red stain, sealing the decisions that she had outlined on the parchment with the authority of the Inquisition.

“It would only be for a short time, during the full moon,” he explained, wanting to be as clear with the Ambassador as he could. “I would return immediately afterward.”

“Yes, I believe that you would, Inquisitor,” she said, “but I’m afraid that things with the Inquisition are much too fluid for us to be able to allow you any time away from us. We’ve only begun to establish our supply routes for Skyhold, and Commander Rutherford is still concerned that there may be spies among the refugees whom we have been accepting into the bailey. Our negotiations with Orlais have only … Oh, yes. Here, you can read the latest report that we’ve received for yourself.”

Varassan reached out reluctantly to take the little scrap of parchment, just the perfect size to be attached to one of Leliana’s messenger ravens. To his great relief, there were only a few words scrawled on the paper, and he was able to read them, thanks to his lessons with Cassandra.

_Orlais moves to civil war. Support uncertain._

“If it’s a war,” he muttered, “how can it be civil?”

He heard Josephine laugh softly in response, and when he looked over at her, she was smiling widely. “I’ve often wondered the same thing myself, Inquisitor. We could even say that we’ve been less than civil in our own efforts, although I believe that we’re working to protect as many people as we can from war.”

Varassan grinned back at her. “That must be the main reason why you all chose me to bear this title. If I’m the one who’s being rude to our enemies and allies, then you can blame it on my Dalish upbringing. After all, it’s been millennia since the Dalish could trust anyone not of a clan.”

Josephine gasped. “No, no, of course I didn’t mean that, Inquisitor!”

“No, Ambassador,” he teased, holding up one hand to forestall her protests. “If I’ve already accepted the title, then you may as well acknowledge that I’ve accepted everything else that will come with it. But, to return to my original request, would it be possible …”

The door to Josephine’s office slammed open.

“You must do something, Ambassador,” Vivienne complained, taking a few strides into the room and then stopping when she realized that he was there, too. “Inquisitor. I hadn’t expected to see you this morning. You’ll have to excuse me, but it’s imperative that I speak with the Ambassador. Alone.”

Varassan inclined his head in acceptance of the mage’s need and exited into the main hall of Skyhold. Lingering near the door, he listened to see whether he could learn what had Vivienne’s temper blazing so brightly that morning. In all honesty, of course, the mage’s temper usually burned hotly, but he rarely saw her so overtly emotional.

“You must do something about that … that elven waif, Josephine. She has no sense of boundaries, and she seems to believe that ‘liberating’ certain of my personal belongings and spreading them among the refugees is …”

He didn’t need to hear more. Because of their close proximity to each other, the members of the Inquisition had been forced to be a little … creative … in their lodging arrangements. Vivienne, because of her former status at the court of Orlais, had claimed the large, open-air solar on the balconies directly above the raised dais at the end of the main hall of Skyhold. The fact that the space had been designed as part of the corridors of the keep seemed to mean nothing to the mage, and her imperious demeanor kept most of the population of Skyhold away from her “private” chamber.

Most of the population. But not all.

Varassan assumed that Vivienne was complaining about Sera, an elf who had offered her somewhat tenuous connections to an illicit band of servants and merchants when she joined the Inquisition. The two women were destined to continually rub against each other, however, because each, in some way or another, embodied everything that the other despised. Vivienne, the very heights of aristocracy, which to Sera were those who kept anyone not of their own station in virtual slavery; and Sera, who felt that the rules were made to be broken, when people like Vivienne believed that they worked so hard to create equitable guidelines for the majority. Neither would ever see the value in the other’s arguments for their ideals, but they would somehow work together — or they could leave the Inquisition.

Sighing to himself, Varassan wandered down the main hall and out into the bright sunlight of the central bailey of the keep. Pausing at the top of the stairs, he studied the sturdy, stone buildings and the people who were moving busily among them: armory, smithy, stables, quartermaster’s offices, even a tavern where everyone was encouraged to relax among their new comrades. Skyhold had everything that a growing army could need to train for an uncertain future, and the Inquisition would need it all.

It was the tavern, however, that caught and kept Varassan’s attention. Because he had been the one to accept so many of the offers of assistance from the wildly different members of the Inquisition, he also felt that it was his responsibility to know what little corner of the keep each had chosen for his or her own. The tavern was where he could usually find the Iron Bull and his Chargers sharing more than a few mugs of ale — or other, more potent and, to Varassan’s taste, vile types of alcohol. Cole had found a place there, haunting the attics and probably scaring the life out of anyone who chanced upon him up there. And in a cozy room at the front of the second floor, he could always find the disarray and confusion of Sera’s collections of … things.

Walking swiftly down the stairs, he studied the front of the tavern and found her there, just as he had expected, straddling the sill of her open window and swinging one booted foot idly from side to side. When he was directly under her, he stopped and called up to her, not loudly enough to attract anyone else’s attention but just enough so that she would hear him.

“Sera, come here at once.”

He saw her boot stop moving and then her head appeared over the edge of the eaves of the building. “What’s that, Elfy?” she called down to him. “Got your knickers in a twist again?”

Varassan shook his head. “Just come down, will you? I don’t feel like climbing up all those stairs right now.”

The elf snorted and slipped both legs out of the window. In the next moment, she had dropped to the ground beside him and looked over at him with a slight sneer on her face. “You’ve been listening to all them others today, haven’t you? Them ones what are tellin’ you that you’re the big cheese or something? Cheese! Ha! Giant stink of some kind of …”

“Sera,” he said on a low growl which, surprisingly, stopped her from continuing to compare him to a dairy product. “If you’ve taken anything from Vivienne’s apartments, you should return it immediately.” She was about to respond, but he held up his hand and shook his head sharply. “I know. You’re _liberating_ it from the oppression of its servitude to the elite, which would be commendable in other circumstances. But you’re here, in Skyhold, and you have to live with everyone around you. And I would prefer that we do it peaceably. Do you honestly believe that Vivienne will give you any peace until whichever item she’s missing is found?”

Looking down at the ground at her feet, Sera scuffed at a loose rock with the toe of one boot. “No,” she finally admitted. “Miss Prissypants won’t leave me alone. Even though I’m not the one who took anything,” she finished defiantly.

Varassan rubbed his fingers against his forehead and sighed again. “Then find what’s missing. Surely someone with your connections could discover what Vivienne’s done with the thing that’s lost or who decided that it was so vital that they had to have it. Solve the mystery, Sera, and save all of us from whatever well-worded slights that she’s planning to use on the both of us the next time we meet.”

“A mystery, eh?” Sera responded, crossing her arms on her chest. “I may not need the Friends of Red Jenny for this, but I have enough other sources. I should probably start in the kitchens. A little snack to shore up my energy, and then I can …” She continued to mutter to herself while she walked down the stairs in the direction of the stable yard and the entrance to the kitchens. Varassan watched her go with a sense of relief, hoping that whatever the mage had lost would be found under one of the sea of pillows that decorated the solar now. And, if Sera had taken the item — which he doubted — he knew that she would return it, if only to make him happy.

It was a satisfying start to his day, in many ways, and it suddenly occurred to him that he deserved a little drink in celebration. Taking a few steps toward the door to the tavern, he looked around the bailey again and then stopped.

Cassandra Pentaghast was sitting near the Inquisition’s practice dummies, balanced on a thick stump of wood with a book in her hands.

It had been quite a while since she had come into his room to help him better his reading skills — since before the destruction of Haven, as a matter of fact. But even though he struggled with the words and especially the formal phrasing that some of their allies used, he hadn’t been able to find a way to resume his lessons with her. But perhaps now, since they were becoming more used to the routine of Skyhold, she would be able to make time for him again.

Walking as quietly as he could, he padded closer to her, inhaling deeply just at that moment when he was able to detect the special perfume of her sweat and the soaps she used when she washed. He was nearly beside her when she suddenly seemed to sense his presence, and she looked up in surprise, quickly closed her book, and tried to hide it behind her back.

“You’re reading without me, Seeker,” he accused in a near whisper. “You know that I continue to be nearly hopeless with the letters, and still you’ve abandoned me to my fate.”

“I’ve done no such thing,” she denied, drawing herself up to her full height and frowning at him. “You were doing perfectly well with your reading when we left Haven, and you haven’t complained even once about it since we arrived at Skyhold. I haven’t seen that it was necessary for us to … for me to …”

He stepped closer to her — not so close that she would feel that there was a need for her to back away — and tilted his head toward one of her ears. “Necessary and pleasant are two completely different things, Cassandra. I have found our time together very pleasant, and now that pleasure is continually denied to me. I am like a man who has drunk the finest wine, but now must consume only water.”

He could hear her gasp, and he tipped his head back so that he could meet her caramel eyes. Studying her face, he watched an interesting array of emotions flit across her features — wonderment, hope, curiosity. But when they settled at last in an angry little scowl, he had to ask himself what he had said or done to cause that emotion at the last.

“You shouldn’t … you needn’t …” Cassandra said haltingly, before she fell completely silent.

“So,” he said as a way to give her time to recover her composure, “what precisely are you reading without me? I assume it’s not a tactical analysis of our defeat at Haven. Cullen would have that. Is it …” He stopped dramatically and raised both of his eyebrows at her, hoping to make her laugh and dispel some of the lingering resentment that he could see on her face. “A romance? Have you been continuing the story of _Swords and Shields_ without me, Seeker?”

She drew in her breath sharply again, and a delightful, rosy flush of color stained her cheeks. “I … no, it’s not … it’s just that …” Finally, she gave up and brought the book out so that he could see the cover. “Yes, it’s _Swords and Shields_. But it’s the last volume that was written. I was simply rereading it, because I’m certain that Varric will be sending the sequel to the printers any day now. This one ended in a cliffhanger, and I know that he wouldn’t conclude the story in that particular way. He simply couldn’t do that to m- … to his loyal readers.”

“He couldn’t?” Varassan asked her, accepting the book that she was extending toward him. The colorful cover showed their hero and heroine in another inescapable battle, and for just a moment, he wondered whether they would successfully escape. By the Dread Wolf, he thought to himself, I’ve become as much of a romantic as Cassandra has ever been, wondering whether two completely imaginary people might some day find their happily-ever-after. But then again, if he could find a way for the two of them to renew their moments together, exposing his long-dormant, completely romantic soul might be worth it.

“If there’s a new volume about to be released, then I think it’s imperative that I’m caught up on the tale.” He crossed his arms on his chest, tucking the volume of _Swords and Shields_ under the bulwark of those two, strong limbs. “Come up to my chamber tonight, so that we can continue the story. We were on — what? — volume three?”

Cassandra blushed even more brightly and turned to look over at one of the practice dummies that Cullen had had erected in this part of the yard. “Two. We were on volume two when we were forced to retreat from Haven. But you really can’t expect me to … I mean, there are so many people. And they will talk so …”

Varassan dropped his arms and stepped closer to her. “Then I’ll come to you, Cassandra. After dinner. With the smith and his apprentices down below your sleeping quarters, you’ll feel adequately chaperoned, won’t you?”

When she looked at him through the veil of her long, dark eyelashes, he could feel that primal stirring inside of his body as it threatened to overwhelm him. By the Dread Wolf, he thought, if one look can send such thrilling through my body, what will happen to me when I’m actually able to kiss her? To hold her tightly in my arms and run my hands across the velvety softness of her skin? And then, to take that sweet warmth …

He shook his head and looked quickly around them. Luckily, the troops had been taken outside of Skyhold for drills. He and the Seeker were alone, and when he met her eyes again, he could see that she had relented completely. She would allow him to come to her and listen while she continued the saga of _Swords and Shields_.

“Yes,” she admitted, her voice dropping to a husky whisper for his ears alone. “You may come to me in my room. But you must bring extra candles. The forge only provides so much light, even though the heat it emits is more than satisfactory.”

He smiled warmly at her and reached out to place the novel that he had been holding in one of her hands. While his fingers were so close to hers, he stretched them forward just a bit more, brushing them deliberately along the back of one of her hands and then up along the side of her wrist. “Until tonight,” he whispered and then turned on his heel to find something — anything — to occupy the time until he could be alone with her that evening.


	9. Conjunction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varassan continues to romance the Seeker.

_Conjunction — The term applied when two planets are in close proximity to each other in the sky, from the perspective of an Earth-bound observer. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

Varassan looked down into his pack — the pack that he had carried with him for more years than he cared to count — and shook his head in an attempt to deny what his own eyes were showing him. He had finally done it. He had slipped down into the depths of the romantic soul that Fionne had tried to kill and had allowed it to take root inside of him. Deeply. Beyond the point where he might ever be able to uproot it again.

What else could the little collection of items that he continually carried with him mean? Certainly the candles could be explained away as useful for reading dispatches and reports, but these were delicately scented and had cost him what he had thought of as an extravagant amount when he had purchased them from that merchant. He had always considered it a great stroke of luck when he had discovered the volume of poetry that was nestled among the tapers. When he had first opened the book, he had been grateful that he could read more than a few words, but the complex imagery and intricacy of the phrasing had confused and frustrated him. In the end, he had gone to Varric, entrusting the dwarf with his secret and enduring the little mocking asides that were peppered into their lessons.

Through the process, however, he had discovered that Varric’s humor — much of it directed at himself — hid a heart nearly as romantic as his own. What other reason could explain why the dwarf had churned out the next volume of _Swords and Shields_ , despite the fact that he had sworn that he was through with the series, simply because Varassan knew that it would please Cassandra Pentaghast and he had asked the dwarf to do it as a favor? Why else would Varric spend so many hours with him beside the fire in the great hall of Skyhold, drawing him carefully through the history behind some of the references and the imagery?

So in the end, when Varassan finally had pressed the book open in the privacy of his chamber at the top of the keep, he had been able to read each poem, finally choosing the one that spoke most deeply to his soul.

If he was lucky, it would speak equally as deeply to Cassandra’s.

If he was even more lucky, it would finalize a process that had occupied weeks and weeks of his free time. Ever since that morning …

“Stop!” Cassandra had snapped at him when she had emerged from the passage behind him and onto the inner battlements of the keep. At the time, Varassan had been leaning his elbows on the crenelated stones, staring at the buildings that they were only beginning to repair and open to the guests and craftsmen and merchants who had been gathering under the protection of the Inquisition. He had been completely still at that moment, so her word — that simple command — had surprised him. Ignoring the order, he had turned to lean back against the wall with his elbows behind him, smiling over at her with what he had been certain she thought of as his cockiest grin.

“I’m not moving, Seeker,” he had replied. “So I see no reason for you to order me to halt.”

“No, I didn’t mean … it wasn’t that,” she had complained, drawing her eyebrows together and frowning at him viciously. “I wasn’t at all referring to whether you would move when I approached you. Certainly …” Her gaze had dropped from his, and her voice had become a whisper. “My experience has shown that you will only insist on drawing closer.” Then she lifted her head and said in a normal voice, “I meant something completely different. Something that I need you to do for me.”

He had shrugged and continued to look at her patiently. If anything, the months of speaking with her had taught him that she would eventually get to her point even it it did start with two or three comments that seemed completely unrelated to her final demand. Gesturing with one hand he had waited, enjoying watching the play of emotion across her expressive features and the pulls and pouts of her lips.

“I need you to stop. All of it.”

He had shrugged. “All of what?”

“The flirting. The whispering in my ear. The compliments.” She had stopped suddenly when her voice caught, and she had softly cleared her throat. “And the secret touches. You must stop them all. Immediately.”

“I must?” Varassan had pushed himself away from the wall and had taken only one step closer to the Seeker. But because he had studied her in such detail, he had seen the moment when her entire body had tensed. He had stopped himself then and had crossed his arms on his chest, meeting her caramel eyes and smiling suggestively at her.

“Yes. There! That!” she had exclaimed, pointing at him accusingly. “Stop that!”

“But why, Cassandra? It makes you blush so prettily.”

Gasping, the Seeker had lifted one hand to press its back against her cheek. “Yes, but … no, you don’t understand. You can’t mean to court me? By the Maker, you probably don’t even understand what that means …”

Varassan had laughed and moved at an angle toward her, drawing closer without her truly knowing that he had lessened the distance between them. For a moment, he considered agreeing with her, but then he remembered those days, long ago, when he had walked in the woods with a beautiful elven girl. “I once courted another Dalish. I had hoped that we would start our lives together and that we would be with each other until the total of our days had passed. So I’m not completely unfamiliar with the concept of courtship.”

“Yes, well, you don’t understand what it means to me, Inquisitor,” Cassandra argued. “You can’t know what my family might expect or what might actually pleas- … I mean, there are certain formalities …”

Looking away from her, he had drawn in a deep breath, trying to hide his frustration. He’d tried for so many weeks to make it clear to the Seeker that he was interested in her as something more than simply an advisor or even a casual flirtation. But she had rebuffed and even started avoiding being alone with him, and he had begun to wonder what exactly he should do about her seeming coldness. Had he misread her interest in him as more than simple compassion for someone who had been thrust into an impossible situation, a situation that she — at least in part — was responsible for committing his life to resolving? Was he truly the only one between them who had felt the sparks of connection between them or had dreamed dreams, deep in the depths of the solitary night, about the pleasures that they might find with each other? Was he truly alone in his desire for her?

“So you want me to stop?” he had asked, studying her face in as much detail as he could, watching while her eyebrows drew into a little, pained frown at his words. “Everything. Immediately. Completely.”

“Yes,” she had finally snapped, turning on her heel and walking away down the corridor behind her.

Sighing, he had returned to his contemplation of the buildings of Skyhold while his mind churned for a moment, desperate to find a way to break through the walls that Cassandra had built around her and touch the passionate heart that he knew was waiting inside of her. He had been about to give up and return to his duties when he had heard boot steps echoing off the stones of the keep. Looking over his shoulder, he had met the Seeker’s eyes just when she had emerged into the sunlight again.

“No,” she had whispered, her voice tinged by such a heart-felt sense of longing that he had felt himself ache for her. “No, don’t stop. I can’t … I don’t … Just don’t.”

And then she had been gone again, and Varassan had smiled to himself and begun to plan.

Planning, however, had been a more difficult task than he had expected. He had to admit that Cassandra’s argument had been true, at least in part: he didn’t know anything about courtship outside of the traditions that his own clan had practiced generations ago. And so he had started on a survey of the other members of the inner circle of the Inquisition, gathering advice from the cultures across Thedas: Antiva, Ferelden, Orlais, Tevinter … by the Dread Wolf, he had even asked Varric how the dwarves courted each other. That inquiry had led to such an extensive lecture on contractual negotiations and the establishment of legal partnerships that he had left the great hall of Skyhold with his head reeling and a firm determination to never get involved with dwarves in any way, ever.

But it was actually the _Swords and Shields_ series that gave him the best idea as to which steps he could take to woo and win Cassandra Pentaghast. He still remembered that moment when she had whispered to him, in confidence, that she would be lost to a man like the one whom Varric had created in his novels. A man who would risk everything for the woman he loved and would battle through armies to get to her side. Over these last weeks, he had thought that he had been proving that to her, that he was the kind of man who would come for her time and again, despite the odds.

But he also remembered certain moments when Cassandra had sighed and lost focus on the story. And he had taken the time to review his copy of each book, finding the specific phrases that had seemed to cause the Seeker to catch her breath and stare off into the distance with that hopeful look in her eyes. That was how he had discovered the magical affect that word could have on her, and he had quickly learned that every culture had its own form of poetry that lovers shared to express themselves. 

So when he had happened on that volume of poems, abandoned by the wayside in the Hinterlands, he had finally seen that there might be hope for his plan after all. He had purchased the candles and had gone out into the wilderness near Skyhold, at first to find places where the wildflowers blossomed in their greatest abundance. Then he had scouted a likely place where he could spring his surprise on her — far enough away from the keep that no one would discover them but close enough that she would easily be able to stomp back to her quarters if everything went sideways. Filling his backpack with everything that he would need and then went in search of the Seeker.

He found in her usual place, near the training dummies, although this time she wasn’t swinging her sword at the targets. When Cassandra finally noticed him, she smiled at him uncertainly and stopped her pacing.

“Inquisitor?” She studied him for a moment with her arms crossed over the breastplate of her armor. “Did you need something from me?”

He shook his head briefly. “I had simply wondered whether we could speak together. In private.”

The Seeker frowned. “And that’s not wanting something from me? That seems exactly like something.”

Her determination to take everything that he said so literally made him want to laugh, but the urge was suddenly overwhelmed by his own uncertainty as to what her response would be. “I apologize. Yes, I had wanted to ask you to meet me so that we could be alone together.”

“You did? But why?”

Varassan sighed, knowing that she still couldn’t trust him completely. “Just meet me, Cassandra,” he pleaded with her. “Come to the grove outside Skyhold. You know the one I’m talking about, don’t you?”

The Seeker studied him, suspicion darkening her gaze. “I do. When?”

“Tonight. After dinner.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then slowly nodded. Because he still had expected her to refuse him, Varassan had nearly been overwhelmed by the sense of relief that had filled him when she moved her head. Gripping the straps of the backpack that was over his shoulders, he resolutely turned away from any further conversation with the Seeker and walked through the main gates and across the bridge that led out of Skyhold.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon in a fret, placing and then rearranging the candles along the pathway that Cassandra would have to follow in order to reach the small clearing in the grove of trees. After picking what seemed like a hundred wildflowers, he discarded nearly two-thirds of them, finding tiny imperfections in the ones that he reduced to petals and then spread along the trail she would have to take to reach their rendezvous. Then he placed the “perfect” blossoms in a vase and set them to one side of the blankets that he had spread across the soft grasses at the center of the grove. Finally, he pulled the little book of poetry from his pack and then wandered away from the arrangement of candles and flowers to find a place to stow the leather satchel.

Because he had been distracted by his need to stow his pack, he almost missed the moment when she actually started up the flower-strewn and candle-lined pathway, and he had needed to rush back between the trees. Stepping from among the trees, he read the first line of the poem that he had selected.

Cassandra whirled to face him, her eyes alight with humor. “That poem? That’s the poem that you’ve chosen for this night and this place?”

Varassan frowned slightly, “I’m sorry. I liked it. Is there something wrong with my choice?”

Smiling at him in a way that he thought was — suspicious at the very least — she moved in a circle around him, reminding him of some of the dances that he had seen in Orlais. “No, Inquisitor, there’s nothing wrong with your choice.” And then she started to recite the next few stanzas for him. He watched her in surprise, chiding himself for thinking that she might never have heard the verses in his little volume. When she finally completed her circle — and her recitation — she stopped in front of him and met his eyes for a long moment.

There was a glimmer in the depths of those pools of caramel, and he felt himself sinking into the warmth in her gaze.

And then, suddenly, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his lips passionately.

Her action surprised him so much that, for a moment, all he could do was cling to her and try not to lose his balance. While his body refused to surrender to the pull of an abundant, earthly nature, his mind grappled with the shock of what was happening between them. Of course it was everything that he wanted! It was what he had hoped might happen when he had carefully laid the trail of candles and spread the thick blankets into a pallet that would accommodate the both of them if the opportunity presented itself. But not for a moment had he believed that everything would culminate so quickly. For weeks, he’d struggled with every step of this — not seduction — _romance_ of Cassandra Pentaghast, trying to find precisely the correct place and time and arrangement of candles and … his mind boggled at the memory.

Or at least it tried. And then the Seeker pulled herself even more closely against him and allowed her tongue to trace across his bottom lip.

And he was lost.

Groaning loudly, he crushed her against his chest, his mouth falling open so that his tongue could play eagerly with hers. Her lips were deliciously soft, her mouth sweet in a way that he couldn’t quite identify … perhaps the drink she’d had with her lunch. Or her own natural flavor. In some way, the thought completely delighted him, because it held the possibility that there would be other moments like this, when he could steal the honey from her mouth and savor it for long, long minutes. With that thought lingering in his mind, he deepened their kiss, answering the gentle curiosity of her embrace with his own fiery passion until the moment when he felt her surrender completely, her body giving in at last and curving against him willingly.

At that moment, he broke their kiss, trailing his lips across the side of her throat and across her chin. His lips discovered the uneven denseness of the scar there, and he determinedly traced that shape with his lips and tongue, until he felt Cassandra stiffen under his caresses. But it didn’t matter. He moved on, skimming his lips down her throat and then back up so that he could take one earlobe between his lips and tug at it playfully.

When she moaned softly, his entire body responded, sending a flashing jolt through him that found its home, making his hardening maleness jump and press more urgently against his leathers. Frowning for a moment, he reminded himself that there was time, that his patience would be rewarded if he could only keep himself in check. Pushing the memory of how long it had been since he had been with a female — werewolf or human — he slowly kissed a trail along her cheek and claimed her mouth in another fiery expression of his passion for her.

He could have stood there, simply kissing her and being kissed in return, but he hadn’t considered that Cassandra had her own ideas of what should pass between them. And perhaps he should have known better, because the Seeker had always been strong-headed — stubborn most people would have said — and determined to get her own way. It was one of the reasons why he was where he was, the leader of an organization that he hadn’t founded, his voice, his image, his choices driving their forward motion. But none of that mattered when he felt her knees soften, and she helped guide their bodies down onto the soft pallet of blankets beneath them. Twisting slightly, he brought himself down beside her, his lips still locked with hers, one thigh riding across her own while they continued to cling together.

His fingers itched to touch her, but when he reached up toward the curves of her breasts, all his fingers found was the cold steel of her breastplate. Without raising his head, he slid his fingers over to the edge, eagerly seeking the clasps that held the metal in place so that he could release the protective barrier between him and Cassandra’s soft flesh. But even though he fumbled up and down along the edge of her armor, without being able to look at the design, he wasn’t able to find the closures. Growling deep in his chest, he ripped his lips away from hers and dragged her up onto her side, opening his eyes to find what he needed to free her to his hands and lips.

He heard her soft giggle, felt the gentle shaking of her body when he allowed that one moment of frustration to escape from his lips. Looking up at her, he met her caramel gaze and saw the smile in her eyes, feeling something inside of him melt with the caress of her good humor.

“I can’t believe that you felt it necessary to wear your armor, Seeker,” Varassan complained, sliding his fingers along the gaps of her breastplate, making his touch just firm enough to penetrate the fabric that hindered his hands so that she could get some hint of what he meant to do to her. Deepening his voice, he allowed a bit of his more untamed nature to enter his tone when he continued, “Take it off. Take it off now, Cassandra.”

He saw a spark enter her eyes at his words, felt her begin to tremble while she slowly nodded at him. Leaving her to take care of the pieces on her upper body, he moved lower, stripping off her boots while he continued to caress her, his hands sliding over her thighs while he removed her footwear and stockings, then moving back up toward a waist that was covered only by her shirt. He pushed that garment up with his forehead, trailing kisses across her abdomen while his fingers pulled her belt open, moaning softly when her fingers threaded into his hair and squeezed, pulling his hair slightly. Kissing his way from one side of her stomach to the other, he managed to get her belt opened and slipped one hand under her trousers to take her hip in one hand in a tight grip.

Then he growled again and slid higher, taking her shirt with him and pulling it over her head. While he allowed her to settle back onto the pallet, he raised himself up on one elbow while he looked down at her nakedness. She was beautiful, her skin creamy, the already tightening skin of her nipples the color of rough-made bricks, her limbs long and lushly tempting. Sighing softly, he lowered his head again, kissing her gently on the lips before he started his very determined exploration of her bare flesh.

Cassandra moaned softly and let him trace across her body, lips and fingers, pressing and stroking, licking and sucking until he caught the unmistakable scent of her arousal. It snaked up toward him, hitting his nostrils so suddenly that he breathed in deeply as a reflex, the groan of pleasure following his inhale tinged with a primal need to have her. Now.

But he clamped his desire down — hard. He may have lived without a female for many long years of his life, but he hadn’t forgotten that her pleasure could be as thrilling to him as his own would be. Pulling away from her, he slid her pants down along the side of her hips, suddenly overwhelmed by the need to see all of her, every inch of that creamy skin. He knew, of course, that her nakedness would also release more of her natural scent into the air around him, and he had to swallow hard not to simply tear her remaining garments from her body. When he finally had her stripped bare, he looked up into her face, meeting her caramel eyes that were melting pools of passion, burning brightly with her need for him.

“Varassan,” she whispered, lifting her arms to invite him into her embrace. Smiling in response, he slipped up her body, wedging his hardness safely against her belly when he slid one of his thighs between her own. Keeping his weight on his hands, he leaned down to claim her lips, his kiss demanding even as she kissed him back with equal passion. As if to demonstrate her desire for him, her hands began to move across his clothing, gripping it and pulling impatiently at the fabrics until she had managed to strip his shirt over his head and began to stroke his skin. He moaned, secretly delighted that she was as eager in her passion for him as he was for her.

Using his hands and mouth, he stroked and teased her until Cassandra was gasping under him, her eyes tightly closed and her mouth seeking instinctively for his own. He sniffed softly, suddenly awash in her hot scent, and he allowed his fingers to move down her abdomen to the joining of her thighs. To his surprise, her legs fell apart eagerly at his touch, and he slowly traced down to her nether lips, gathering the dampness there onto his fingers while he continued to stroke her, eager to bring her any pleasure that he could, to give them a moment without strategy and battles. Her body arched toward him in an unspoken display of her need, and he felt his own hardness respond. Finally, slowly, Varassan tugged at the closure of his trousers, freed his manhood, and then took his place above her and brought himself to her warmth, just nudging her.

“Cassandra,” he moaned near her ear, biting down on the lobe and suckling it for a moment. “I can’t stop now. If you don’t want me, you have to stop me now.”

Her eyes of melted caramel flew open, and she met his gaze for a moment before she lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. With a powerful squeeze of those limbs, she tried to seat him inside of her heat, but her angle was wrong. Smiling down at her, he guided himself into position and thrust forward into her, too impatient to inch himself into her, too desperate to demonstrate his passion for her. She met his thrust eagerly, her fingertips digging into his buttocks, her heels digging into his thighs to urge him closer. Sinking his teeth into the side of her throat, he wrapped the fingers of one hand around her nipple, coaxing it while he drove into her.

“Varassan!” she screamed long, hot moments later, her body shivering uncontrollably under and around him. Moving to claim her mouth once again, he finally let himself go while he emptied himself into her, filled with the knowing that at last, after all these years, he was at last home.


	10. Eclipse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment's respite before the final battle with Corypheus.

**_Eclipse —_ ** _Any interference between the light from the Sun and the object being illuminated. The Moon frequently moves between the Earth and the Sun, blocking out the Sun's rays. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

Leaning forward with his hands braced on the railing of the balcony of his candlelit room in Skyhold, Varassan fought against the rising dread that threatened to choke him. Choke off his air. Choke off his ability to cry out. Choke off his life completely. Of course, he’d lived with this dread since the moment that he had stepped back into the reality of Thedas with a pulsing, swirling wrongness in the palm of his hand. Since that moment, he had always known that there would be a culmination — an ultimate confrontation between him and whomever was on the other side of these conflicts and machinations. His enemy.

Corypheus. At least now, he had a name.

He’d met that enemy before the collapse of Haven. He knew that twisted face and the cold, otherworldly emptiness of those eyes, and in the deepest places of his being, he knew that that evil needed to die.

And that he was the only person who could do it.

Since he had come back from that other world where he had received the mark, he had known that he had little choice, that he had been cursed or chosen to do something in response to the chaos that had taken hold of Thedas. But that knowing hadn’t been enough to make him want to accept his fate. In fact, if he had been alone in those first moments of reawakening, he would have run — far and fast — without lookin back even once.

But _she_ had been there.

And now _she_ was everything.

Since that moment when he had buried his flesh in her own, had shuddered at her cries of pleasure, had emptied himself into her and had been filled again by her tenderness and passion, he had had a new focus. For her, he would fight on. For he, he would make Thedas a safe place, a place where she could choose for herself what future she would pursue, what the course of her life would be. For _her_.

For himself, well, honestly, he hoped nothing more than that he might continue to intertwine his life with hers. He had had enough years of living. More than any one creature truly deserved. And if it took his life to end the threat to Thedas — to _her_ — then so be it. He was ready to make that sacrifice. For her.

Since that evening among the trees, they had continued to flirt and touch and even steal quiet moments when they could kiss. And more. Her scent lingered around him as if it had been pressed into his skin and occasionally, he would find a small item — some casual thing — that she had left behind in his chamber. And he had smiled.

As much as they had attempted to keep the change in their relationship secret, he was certain that most of the Inquisition knew. There had been enough sly questions, enough backhanded compliments that he had understood their conclusions — and appreciated their support. After all, none of them knew what was to come, what the end of this war would bring, and they all were clinging to whatever small pieces of happiness that they could find. Whether it was the camaraderie of a game of cards or moments stolen with a loved one, every member of the Inquisition fought for his or her own moment, a memory to shield him or her from the despair that whispered around the walls of the snowbound keep.

For Varassan, she was the future, the hope that his entire being could strive for with every aching bit of his own heart and body. Even in those moments when he strained — as any wild animal would — against the restrictions of the Inquisition and its demands on him, she could soothe him. A glance. A touch. Even a simple word could remind him that he had a place here. that he was welcomed, necessary.

But not precisely accepted just as he was. Even still, after all these centuries, there were still moments when the beast inside him would fight for dominance, insist on its moment to breathe the mountain air or taste the iron tang of blood on his tongue. Things the beast treasured as natural to its existence, just as the elf longed for community and tales told around a campfire.

The beast, however, had been more and more insistent on its won way in the last few months. Varassan could feel the struggle as the swirl of green energy drove the wolf to a howling madness, until it seemed that his insides were shredded by the battle between the two powers that had shaped nearly the last year of his life. On those days, when the wolf had reached the end of the tether that Varassan held over his more feral nature, he would escape into the mountains and shift, shaking off the civilization of Thades and roaming the forests. His nose had delighted in the scents of the woodlands, and his ears had strained to catch those small movements in the underbrush that told him that the prey animals knew that he was dangerous. He had laughed and moved on, knowing that he had enough in his pack to keep himself fed without their flesh in his fangs.

Eventually — usually not more than a day or two — he had returned to Skyhold, the wolf more firmly leashed and the swirling green wrongness muted once again, almost as if it had crept into the shadows like the prey creatures, hiding from the threat of the beast within him. Varassan had breathed in relief every time that his foot had hit the bridge to the ancient keep after the excursions, grateful that he had been able, once again, to find his balance among the elf and the werewolf and the green swirl of power.

And _she_ had been there.

Since their moment in the forest, she had somehow always known when he was coming into the keep. She would meet him inside the arching gate room and pull him into her arms. Her lips were full of hunger on these days, warm and eager to explore his mouth while he gripped her desperately against his chest. He would fill his senses with her, staring into the caramel of her eyes, drinking the honey of her lips, stroking the curve of her hips and buttocks despite the fact that she would pull away and look around, afraid that someone would see them. He had let her go in those moments, knowing that she needed to maintain the armor of her position in the Inquisition despite the fiery passion that burned between them.

And he could do that, because she knew, too.

She was still the only person — as far as he knew — who had discovered the secret of his dual nature. Over their months of acquaintance, Cassandra had developed the innate sense of when he needed to roam, to allow his beast to have its time, and she had always found a way to excuse his absence. And to wait for his return.

But that was over now. The pace of the war with Corypheus had increased, and he knew, somehow, that the next battle would be their last. One of them would die: Varassan was determined that it wouldn’t be him.

“Inquisitor?” Her voice slipped into his ears, stirring his longing to kiss and caress and fulfill. He turned to greet her, stepping away from the balcony and moving to intercept her when she crested the long, long staircase into his chamber. Extending his hand, he attempted to help her complete the last step, but she frowned at him and only gripped his fingers after both of her feet were on the floor of the tower room. He felt her squeeze his hand, and he tugged on that grip suddenly, capturing her in his arms and bringing their mouths together in a searing kiss. He could feel her resist for a second, her hands on his chest, just where she could use them to push away from his embrace, her mouth firmly unyielding. Until she melted, her arms slipping up around his neck and her body pressing forward against his chest in surrender. He used her willing acceptance to reposition himself, bringing his hips against hers, snaking his arms around her waist so that he could cup the luscious fullness of her rear and pull her even closer. Their tongues danced together, and he gleefully captured her moans of pleasure, shivering with his own anticipation of what the next caress would be, what sensations it would send racing through his body. He was about to pull his mouth away from hers, to brush his lips down her throat and suck eagerly on the place where her pulse was thundering there, but she jerked her head away first and began to push him backward toward his bed.

“Cassandra?” he asked, a little surprised that she was being so aggressive with him. Since that first night, he had been the one to pursue her, to woo her, to try to win her heart as fully as he could in the time that they had left to them. He had sought her out, planned their intimate moments, taken the kisses that he wanted — no, _needed_ — from her.

But today, she seemed determined, and he ruthlessly reined in his beast, which was already trying to find skin to lick and bite and was furiously scenting her arousal. When his knees hit the bed, he stopped and looked at her, his eyes questioning.

Cassandra blushed a gorgeous coral shade and looked down at the very narrow space between them. “Don’t say anything. There’s nothing that either of us can say that will change tomorrow, Varassan. I only want to be with you — to love you throughout this night. Because …” She stopped and slowly clenched and unclenched her fists.

He stared at her, his heart filling with compassion for her uncertainty. For the uncertainty of the entire Inquisition. Because by this time tomorrow, everything would have changed. Reaching out, he cupped one cheek in his hand, allowing his fingertips to press into her neck while he traced the pad of his thumb across her lips. She continued to avoid his gaze, and he could feel the deep sorrow that was gripping her heart — along with the fear. He suddenly found that all he wanted to do was to reassure her, to take her fears away, and to let her know that she would still be his, no matter the outcome of the battle tomorrow.

He met her gaze and slowly reached out to find the clasps that held her breastplate in position. Over the weeks of their intimacy, he had learned that it nearly took an act of the Chantry’s Maker — who didn’t interfere in the lives of his believers in any event — to get Cassandra into any clothing beside her Seeker’s armor. As a result, Varassan had quickly learned the combinations of straps and buckles that would free her from the metallic embrace and allow her to step into his arms, all soft and pliable, eager and yearning. Today he used that knowledge as a caress, forcing her to wait while he slowly, carefully stripped her down to her bare skin, his eyes drinking in the battle-scarred splendor of her body as the rays of the setting sun bathed her body in rose and gold. Finally, when she was beautifully bare, her breath coming in uneven gasps, he lifted her in his arms and carried her around the corner of the bed. With the fingers that were under her knees, he caught the edge of the blanked and pulled it down, settling her against the pillows. When he moved to stand, she tightened the arms that she had wrapped around his neck and buried her head against his shoulder.

“Let me strip, Cassandra,” he whispered into her dark hair. “I want you in more ways than you can imagine. I want this time with you alone, without other complications. Can you wait for me? Just for a moment?”

When she nodded, he dropped a quick kiss onto her lips and then ripped himself out of this clothing, dropping them around his feet without a care for their condition then or in the future. He had just slipped his leather pants and drawers below his knees and was stepping out of them when he met Cassandra’s gaze again and froze.

She was staring him in the candlelight, an expression of sensual appreciation in the eyes that studied the hardness of his muscles, the hardness of the slopes of his body, the hardness of his hardness. In the past, their coupling had been sometimes frantic, sometimes sweet, but he couldn’t remember an opportunity when they had had the time or the light to appreciate the lush and angled shapes of their bodies. Rising to her knees, she came across the bed toward him, her eyes locked on his stiff member.

“Beautiful,” she murmured while she took him in her fingers.

It jumped in response to her touch, and Varassan could feel the jolt race though him like a wildfire. He gasped and stepped closer to her so that he could slip his fingers into her hair. Her hands continued to stroke him in gentle exploration, and he desperately tried to think of something — anything — that could distract him from the straining and pulsing of his desire in Cassandra’s hands. But she wasn’t stopping, wouldn’t let go of the treasure now that she had dared to take hold of it, and Varassan knew that he didn’t want it to be like that. Tonight wasn’t for him alone. It was for both of them, together. To embolden them against the future that they would face. Together.

Sliding his hands down to cup her cheeks, he forced her gaze away from his manhood and slipped eagerly into the warm caramel of her eyes. Leaning down slowly, he just barely brushed his lips over hers once and then again until her arms slid around his hips and she pressed her breasts agains his abdomen. Stroking his tongue over her lower lip, he silently asked for more, to deepen their connection through the passion of their kiss. When her mouth opened on a sigh, her tongue darted out to play with his, to welcome him more closely to her fire, and he greedily pressed into her, determined to draw the heat of her into himself.

They clung together, their lips beginning a conversation that their hearts weren’t ready to start, especially with mere words. Cassandra’s hands stroked his back and buttocks, her fingertips alternately tender and demanding. Her touch was like the pulsing of his heart, the continual throbbing of his need to be closer to her, to take her, to bring her cresting in uninhibited pleasure. Slipping his knees onto the bed, he pushed her back, using one hand to guide her so that she was reclining, helping her stretch out under him while he continued to kiss her. Coming down onto one elbow beside her, he broke their kiss at last, but he didn’t stop his exploration of her body. One hand trailed down her side and clutched at her hip for a moment before he brought it up to rest on her chest, just below the soft rise of one breast. At the same time, his lips moved in a slow line down her cheek and throat until he was able to feel the erratic beating of her heart under his lips. Opening his mouth, he allowed his teeth to sink into her skin just there, and his body thrilled to the gasping moan that escaped from somewhere in the depths of her being while her fingers closed in his hair and pulled just enough to send a stab of mingled pain and pleasure through him. He nearly laughed in that moment, thrilled at her own expression of desire for him.

Slowly, deliberately, he slipped the hand that had been waiting on her chest up onto the curve of her breast. Her flesh was already eager for his touch, the crest straining taut and sensitive under his fingers. He played with that breast, stroked the curves and then returned to her nipple, teasingly gentle until the moment when he took it between his fingers and pinched it. Gasping, Cassandra arched up from the bedding, her hands clenching on his back, her nails digging into his skin with desperate hunger. Smiling against her throat, he trailed kisses down to the breast, shifting so that he wouldn’t crush her, until he was able to take the nipple into his mouth and suckle at it. He tried to keep his touch gentle, but Cassandra’s fire was blazing too hot to want tenderness. Gripping his head, she held him against her and gasped out a simple command.

“Harder,” she begged, her voice husky and honey sweet to his ears.

“I don’t want to hurt you, my love,” he whispered while he slowly licked the nipple and then blew across it.

Cassandra shook her head on the pillows and then looked down to meet his eyes. “I don’t care,” she replied, the fever of her desire warring with the honesty of her gaze. “If tomorrow should be the last day that I exist, I want to know that I have been loved to the very depths of my soul. I want … I want you to know that we had this night when it was only us and what we felt for each other. By the Maker, Varassan, I want you. Now!”

Her words and the desperate pleading he heard in them broke something inside of him, and he moved deliberately then, his hands and lips caressing in a continual message of his longing for her. Her responses, increasingly more wild and nothing like he had ever expected from the reserved Seeker, drove his control hard against the edge of its breaking. And then, at last, when he could no longer hold himself back, he brought their bodies together, trying at first to slip into the warmth of her by degrees. But Cassandra had other ideas, her hips rising up from the bed while her fingertips dug deeply into the flesh of his buttocks, her nails biting his skin.

And he was lost. Something primal in him seemed to take control, and Varassan found himself lunging forward, his mouth capturing hers, his hips driving into her body. He strove with her until her heard her cry out, felt the trembling and pulsing of her around his manhood just for a moment before he plunged over the edge himself, releasing himself into her with a deep, heartfelt groan. For just a moment, he collapsed on top of her, resting in the warmth of her sweat-slick body and the comforting embrace of her arms, legs, and womanly core. Then he slipped onto the bed, pulling her with him so that she was on top of him, a shield against the cold air that spilled in through the tall, glass-pierced doors of the balcony.

Cassandra came willingly, dropped her head onto his shoulder, and sighed contentedly. After she had settled one thigh between his own, she smoothed her hand over his skin, her fingers curling along the contours of his muscles. Until suddenly, she chuckled and lifted her head.

“Your heart is thundering,” she teased, stretching against him so that she could kiss his jaw. “Are you certain you’re in the best physical condition to meet the challenge tomorrow?”

He growled deep in his chest in answer, beginning to reposition their bodies so that he could demonstrate exactly how fit he was when she looked up. Meeting the caramel of her gaze, he saw the curiosity there. Stilling himself, he abandoned his desires to her own, and he waited patiently while she studied his face.

“Show me,” Cassandra finally asked, her voice a low, hoarse whisper. “Show me all of you. Let me know every part of you, Varassan.” And then she shifted off his body and stretched out on her side on the bed, her head propped on one hand.

“You’re certain?” he asked, knowing that it had been centuries since one being had know him as both the parts of his self. Swallowing hard, he nodded and release his control on the wolf that always prowled just below his skin. He heard Cassandra gasp beside him, and his heart clenched, certain that she would reject him for being a perversion of the will of her Maker. But when he looked over at her, she smiled at him and impulsively reached out.

“Beautiful,” she moaned and then stopped the reflexive motion of her hand. Meeting his eyes, she asked, “May I? I don’t know that you let … would you let me? Touch you?”

He nodded, knowing how desperately his wolf had longed for the attention that Cassandra poured out across his body with loving curiosity and then, at some point, with passionate claiming. When she invited it, he showed her how they could love with him in his shifted form, and he felt himself thrill every time she moaned at the pleasure his tongue and claws could bring her. And when they finally moved together, when they found their release together, he felt a completeness that had been missing from his life for centuries.


	11. Terminator

_**Terminator —** The line which delimits night (shadowed portion) and day (sunlit portion) on a celestial body. The Moon's phases illustrate this. moonconnection.com • Moon Glossary: Lunar Terms and Definitions_

“Cassandra, we have to go. Now.” Varassan gripped her arm in a tight hold and tried to propel her toward the one area in Halamshiral that the members of the Inquisition had already ensured was secure. If the others were doing their jobs, the meeting room was now empty, the place cleared of representatives of the nations of Thedas who were deciding the fate of the organization. _His_ organization. The group of people whom he had sweated and ached and bled for over the last three years.

Threatened once again. And not just by the people who wanted his group disbanded.

When they had discovered this net threat — explosives planted throughout the Orlesian Winter Palace — he had wondered why he was bothering to protect these people. People who were basically telling him that he was no longer necessary. But those instincts, the ones that he had honed in the company of the Inquisition, had gripped him, and he hadn’t been able to look away as he once might have. Instead, he had issued his orders and rushed to find the Seeker, to be certain that she obeyed, since she hadn’t been with him when they had found the charges.

As was so characteristic of her, even after all these years of their intimacy, she pulled back against his hold and glared at him, her caramel eyes sparking with little golden flashes of anger. He saw the question in her eyes as well, but he had too much to do, too many people to keep safe.

Including her.

As quickly as he could, he explained what had happened and what he had to do in the next few hours. She kept quiet at his side, absorbing the new details that they had learned, and then they finally reached the safe rooms.

“Stay here, Cassandra,” Varassan begged her while he pressed her into a dark corner across the hallway. People streamed past them, their voices tinged by their fear, their scents — at least to him — rank with the unknown that had suddenly gripped them all. Shaking off his awareness of them, he concentrated instead on _her_. The oh-so-familiar nectar of her smell wrapped around him when he levered himself closer to her and inhaled against her neck. Because he had dared to lean so close to her, he planted a kiss there, just where he had licked and sucked so many times in the past and then he looked up to meet her eyes. Immediately, he saw that she was still frowning at him, and he smiled in what he hoped was his most winning way.

She didn’t smile back.

“What are you doing, Varassan?” she asked angrily, her lands clenching into tight fists against his chest.

He sighed. In many ways, she was right to think that he was trying to keep her safe only because he loved her. And honestly, there were few rational reasons for him to keep her locked away in a safe area of Halamshiral. Over the last two years of the Inquisition — after their defeat of Corypheus — she had been sent on any number of missions for the organization. He had never stopped her in those moments, had never questioned her assignments, and had welcomed her back to Skyhold with passionate kisses and caresses.

This time was different, and he should have knows from the beginning that she wouldn’t simply follow his request. Without moving from his place beside her throat, he whispered, “Cassandra, I need you here. If I should fall on this expedition, you and Josephine and Cullen must represent the best interests of the Inquisition in front of this council. All three of you — especially now that Leliana is the Divine — because only the three of you know the truth of why the Inquisition continues to be necessary. If you’re not there, the lords will let what we’ve built melt away. And only you have the fire within yourself to fight for the Inquisition.”

When he had finished his explanation, he didn’t pull away fro her. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her body, trying in some way to impress his love for her into her skin. When her hands opened and ran across his chest to cup the nape of his neck, he sighed, unaware that he had been holding his breath until that moment.

“I’ll go then,” she replied as softly. “But you had better return to me.”

He nodded and brushed his lips across hers. “I will, Cassandra Pentaghast. I swear it.” And then he kissed her, hard and long, straining closer to her body with a passion that still burned like a brilliant bonfire between them. But then, finally, he had to let her go, and he stepped out into the light of the hallway and nodded to her.

She frowned and nodded back, her fingertips rising to gently brush against the kiss-bruised flesh of her lips. Then she determinedly straightened her armor, checked the lay of her sword against her hip, and crossed into the safe room with the others.

And just like that, Varassan knew that those people would be safe.

Racing through the gardens of the Winter Palace, he joined the other members of the Inquisition at the _eluvian_ that would take them to confront this newest threat. And while he struggled from gateway to gateway, from clue to clue, he wondered once again _why?_ Why was he fighting so desperately to save the lives of people who were about to destroy the security that he had built up around himself over these last three years? Why did his heart beat faster and a sheen of perspiration rise on his skin at the thought that those specific lives might be lost? Not just the members of the Inquisition whom he had left behind to safeguard the lords who were attending the council, but the lords themselves. People who refused to see beyond the next day, to see that there were other threats that could and would appear out of nearly nothing to threaten the entirety of Thedas. People who wouldn’t admit that the Inquisition had been the only thing standing between them and the certain destruction that Corypheus would have rained down upon the land and the people.

Shaking his head, he let those thoughts slip away from him in the even motion of drawing his bow and loosing his arrows in to his chosen targets. And then, finally, he was alone in a field of statues — Qunari soldiers who had been turned to stone, frozen for eternity in aggressive battle stances, their weapons melded to their flesh, their eyes blank and their thoughts lost to the whisper of wind that brushed across his skin. Moving stealthily among the stone bodies, he slipped another arrow into place, listening for the battle cry ahead of him and stepping into range just in time to see the last Qunari become a statue, too. And then he looked beyond the combatant and found his quarry.

“Solas,” he said coldly, recognizing the elf whom he had, in some way, trusted as part of the Inquisition. Even though he could never have said that he considered the elf a friend.

“I knew you would come,” Solas said with even more frost in his voice than Varassan had used. Reaching up, his hand idly stroked over the wolf skin that hung over one of his shoulders, and the Inquisitor watched the motion with an edgy wariness. “If things had been different, if you hadn’t spoiled my plans by picking up the anchor — _my_ anchor — when you did, you would have been one of the beneficiaries of the gift that I will give to all the _elvhen_. You could have lived forever, Varassan, could have wielded magics that these mere mortals can only dream of controlling.”

____

____

Varassan snorted in disbelief, his eyes focused unblinkingly on the other elf. “The _elvhen_ have grown far past any need for magics or gods. You should have recognized that fact at some point in the year that you were with the Inquisition.”

“They are slaves,” Solas responded, his brow furrowing in anger. “They were once the greatest power in all of the world, and now they are less than nothing. But I will make them more once again. I will give them the gifts that rightly should have been theirs, and they will once again use the name Fen’Harel with the respect that it deserves.”

Varassan did finally blink then, his mind reeling at what the other elf was telling him. Fen’Harel, the betrayer who had led the elven gods to their doom? Was Solas actually claiming that he was that god? The trickster whom mothers warned their babies would snatch them away at night if they strayed too far from the fire? The god whose name was most often spoken as a curse? Of course, no one in their right mind would make a claim like that, and if he thought about it reasonably, the field littered with Qunari statues spoke more loudly of a power that no mage in Thedas had ever exhibited in front of him in all the centuries of his very long life. So it was possible, wasn’t it?

“Well, that’s one curse I’ll never use again,” he said, sarcasm dripping from each word like acid, “although it seems even more appropriate now that you’ve decided to doom most of the people of Thedas.”

Solas stared at him coldly for a moment. “What do you care about them? They are about to destroy the work of your life, your precious Inquisition. You’re about to realize that, once again, the humans can take everything away from the _elvhen_ with the merest lifting of their finger. Why wouldn’t you want to join me? To take what is rightfully yours and always has been since the beginning of time? To wield the power to shape the world in the way that you see fit?”

“Like you? To make a world for the _elvhen_ by destroying every other race on Thedas?”

Shrugging, his face calmly unconcerned at the idea of the destruction that he would create, Solas arrogantly turned his back on him and walked toward an eluvian that was active a few steps away. Turning once again, the other elf looked Varassan up and down and then, at the last, extended his hand once again. “Come with me. I can make your life one of wonder. The power that will be yours … You might even begin to believe that you are a god.”

Varassan laughed bitterly, recalling another moment, centuries ago, when he had heard similar words. Deliberately, he took a step closer to Solas, watching while the other elf — the supposed Fen’Harel — stiffened in suspicion and moved one hand away from his side. Taking the hint, Varassan stopped his forward motion again and merely looked over at Solas, studying the pale face that should have reminded him of family, of home.

Which it didn’t. At all.

The Dalish whom he had known had been tanned and fit, not pasty and drawn. They had found their strength through their connection to the forests, had honed their skills and their crafts based on a basic respect for the nature around them. And they had needed clan and family, for protection and for a sense of continuity that bound them together. There was nothing in the Dalish that had ever spoken of the individual with limitless power, of each person protecting only his own interests. No matter who this Solas was, he didn’t understand what the Dalish had become, and he never would be able to convince all of the clans to abandon family for individual power.

These thoughts flew through his mind while he stared across the rock-strewn meadow toward the man claiming to be Fen’Harel. Slowly, not wanting to break the contact between his gaze and the other elf’s, he let his lips pull away from his teeth in a snarl. His beast prowled forward and then stepped into control, shifting his body from his the elven form that he had worn almost continually for decades to his werewolf. Growling softly, Varassan watched as Solas’s eyes widened slightly and then squinted at him, as if the ancient elf could measure the threat that the beast represented by simply looking at him. He snarled more deeply, took another tentative step forward and then laughed once again.

“There may be a few factors that you haven’t included in your estimates, Solas,” he growled. “You’ve been asleep for nearly a thousand years, Fen’Harel. And by the Dread Wolf, there are things that you can’t know and can’t comprehend. It would be … detrimental … to you, in the end, if you didn’t take that into consideration. But good luck with your takeover of Thedas’s _elvhen_. And of the world. I hope that it gives you as many headaches as it’s given me over the last three years. Because, believe me, you deserve every single one of them. Traitor. Deceiver. Liar.”

While he watched, Solas gritted his teeth tightly together and walked through the _eluvian_ , disappearing in a liquid shimmer of energy.

Turning, Varassan slipped back into his elven form and slipped his pack from his shoulders, pulling a new set of clothing out to replace the leathers that were lying shredded at his feet. With slow deliberation, he pulled the items on, his mind whirling with the truths and conjectures that he now had to face.

Most importantly, however, was that he had to protect _her_. When he was ready, he raced back the way he had come, longing for her arms, hurrying to his kisses.

Because whatever was to come, they would face it. Together.


End file.
